This fable comes home to ourselves, we of this island having always been
looked upon as cruel to strangers. Whether there is any thing in the
manner of our situation, as an island, which consequently can be no
thoroughfare to other countries, and so is not made use of by strangers
upon that account, which makes us thus shy and uncivil; or, whether it
be a jealousy upon account of our liberties, which puts us upon being
suspicious of, and unwilling to harbour any that are not members of the
same community, perhaps it would not be easy to determine. But that it
is so in fact, is too notorious to be denied; and probably can be
accounted for no better way than from the natural bent of our temper, as
it proceeds from something peculiar to our air and climate. It has been
affirmed, that there is not in the whole world besides a breed of Cocks
and Dogs so fierce and incapable of yielding as that of ours; but that
either of them, carried into foreign countries, would degenerate in a
few years. Why may not the same be true of our men? But if strangers
find any inconvenience in this, there is a comfortable consideration to
balance it on the other side, which is, that there are no people under
the sun so much given to division and contention among themselves as we
are. Can a stranger think it hard to be looked upon with some shyness,
when he beholds how little we spare one another? Was ever any
foreigner, merely for being a foreigner, treated with half that malice
and bitterness which differing parties express towards each other? One
would willingly believe that this proceeds in the main, on both sides,
from a passionate concern for our liberties and well-being; for there is
nothing else which can so well excuse it. But it cannot be denied, that
our aversion, notwithstanding our being a trading nation, to have any
intercourse with strangers, is so great, that when we want other objects
for our churlishness, we raise them up among ourselves; and there is,
sometimes, as great a strangeness kept up between one county and another
here, as there is between two distinct kingdoms abroad. One cannot so
much wonder at the constant hostilities which are observed between the
inhabitants of South and North Britain, of Wales and Ireland, among one
another, when a Yorkshireman shall be looked upon as a foreigner by a
native of Norfolk, and both be taken for outlandish intruders by one
that happens to be born within the bills of mortality.