The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts
with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of
sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces
of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are
charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the
punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the
English truth and credit. The government strictly performs its
engagements. The subjects do not understand trifling on its part. When
any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it was
resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. And, in modern
times, any slipperiness in the government of political faith, or any
repudiation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole
nation to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private men keep their
promises, never so trivial. Down goes the flying word on the tablets,
and is indelible as Domesday Book.
Their practical power rests on their national sincerity. Veracity
derives from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. Nature
has endowed some animals with cunning, as a compensation for strength
withheld; but it has provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers
of public wrong. In the nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded,
her races are loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of the social
state. Beasts that make no truce with man, do not break faith with each
other. 'T is said, that the wolf, who makes a _cache_ of his prey, and
brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging it is not found,
is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces. English veracity seems to
result on a sounder animal structure, as if they could afford it. They
are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of promises, and they
require plain dealing of others. We will not have to do with a man in a
mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a straight line, hit whom and where
it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the type of
their race, is called by a writer at the Norman Conquest, the
_truth-speaker; Alueredus veridicus_. Geoffrey of Monmouth says of King
Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that "above all things he hated a lie." The
Northman Guttorm said to King Olaf, "It is royal work to fulfil royal
words." The mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs, as, _Fare
fac_,--Say, do,--of the Fairfaxes; _Say and seal_, of the house of
Fiennes; _Vero nil verius_, of the De Veres. To be king of their word,
is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say, "The English of this
is," etc.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the
lowest of the people is "honor-bright," and their vulgar praise, "his
word is as good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and
the cause is damaged in the public opinion, on which any paltering can
be fixed. Even Lord Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when he came
to define a gentleman, declared that truth made his distinction; and
nothing ever spoken by him would find so hearty a suffrage from his
nation. The Duke of Wellington, who had the best right to say so,
advises the French General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole of
an English officer. The English, of all classes, value themselves on
this trait, as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the popular
belief, are more polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids
the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging, that in the
French language, one cannot speak without lying.
They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not easily learn
to make a show, and take the world as it goes. They are not fond of
ornaments, and if they wear them, they must be gems. They read gladly
in old Fuller, that a lady, in the reign of Elizabeth, "would have as
patiently digested a lie, as the wearing of false stones or pendants of
counterfeit pearl." They have the earth-hunger, or preference for
property in land, which is said to mark the Teutonic nations. They
build of stone; public and private buildings are massive and durable.
In comparing their ships' houses, and public offices with the American,
it is commonly said, that they spend a pound, where we spend a dollar.
Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout
their house and belongings, mark the English truth.
They confide in each other,--English believes in English. The French
feel the superiority of this probity. The Englishman is not springing a
trap for his admiration, but is honestly minding his business. The
Frenchman is vain. Madame de Stael says, that the English irritated
Napoleon, mainly, because they have found out how to unite success with
honesty. She was not aware how wide an application her foreign readers
would give to the remark. Wellington discovered the ruin of Bonaparte's
affairs, by his own probity. He augured ill of the empire, as soon as
he saw that it was mendacious, and lived by war. If war do not bring in
its sequel new trade, better agriculture and manufactures, but only
games, fireworks, and spectacles,--no prosperity could support it; much
less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket, like France.
So he drudged for years on his military works at Lisbon, and from this
base at last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing in his
countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade of Europe.
At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I happened to be a guest,
since my return home, I observed that the chairman complimented his
compatriots, by saying, "they confided that wherever they met an
Englishman, they found a man who would speak the truth." And one cannot
think this festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of
April, wherever two or three English are found, they meet to encourage
each other in the nationality of veracity.
In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion's mouth, no men
surpass them. On the king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to
offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the
Vulgate, with a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God
will judge"; and they so honor stoutness in each other, that the king
passed it over. They are tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily
change their opinions to suit the hour. They are like ships with too
much head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or even
adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of conduct. Whilst I
was in London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from Paris, in
February, 1843. Many private friends called on him. His name was
immediately proposed as an honorary member to the Athenaeum. M. Guizot
was blackballed. Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. But
the Englishman is not fickle. He had really made up his mind, now for
years as he read his newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot; and the
altered position of the man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the
country, makes no difference to him, as it would instantly, to an
American.
They require the same adherence, thorough conviction and reality in
public men. It is the want of character which makes the low reputation
of the Irish members. "See them," they said, "one hundred and
twenty-seven all voting like sheep, never proposing anything, and all
but four voting the income tax,"--which was an ill-judged concession of
the government, relieving Irish property from the burdens charged on
English.
They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament. The ruling
passion of Englishmen, in these days, is a terror of humbug. In the
same proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your
own. They like a man committed to his objects. They hate the French, as
frivolous; they hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Germans, as
professors. In February, 1848, they said, Look, the French king and his
party fell for want of a shot; they had not conscience to shoot, so
entirely was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out.
They attack their own politicians every day, on the same grounds, as
adventurers. They love stoutness in standing for your right, in
declining money or promotion that costs any concession. The barrister
refuses the silk gown of Queen's Counsel, if his junior have it one day
earlier. Lord Collingwood would not accept his medal for victory on
14th February, 1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st June,
1794; and the long-withholden medal was accorded. When Castlereagh
dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to the king's levee, until the
unpopular Cintra business had been explained, he replied: "You furnish
me a reason for going. I will go to this, or I will never go to a
king's levee." The radical mob at Oxford cried after the tory Lord
Eldon, "There's old Eldon; cheer him; he never ratted." They have given
the parliamentary nickname of _Trimmers_ to the time-servers, whom
English character does not love.[9]
[9] It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary
virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England to the
Emperor Louis Napoleon. I am sure that no Englishman whom I had
the happiness to know, consented, when the aristocracy and the
commons of London cringed like a Neapolitan rabble, before a
successful thief. But--how to resist one step, though odious, in
a linked series of state necessities?--Governments must always
learn too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for
nations as for single men.
They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary delusions, thus,
to believe what stands recorded in the gravest books, that the movement
of 10th April, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners: which, to be
sure, is paralleled by the democratic whimsey in this country, which I
have noticed to be shared by men sane on other points, that the English
are at the bottom of the agitation of slavery, in American politics: and
then again to the French popular legends on the subject of _perfidious
Albion_. But suspicion will make fools of nations as of citizens.
A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than other
countrymen, and has given occasion to the observation that English wit
comes afterwards,--which the French denote as _esprit d'escalier_. This
dulness makes their attachment to home, and their adherence in all
foreign countries to home habits. The Englishman who visits Mount Etna
will carry his teakettle to the top. The old Italian author of the
"Relation of England" (in 1500) says: "I have it on the best
information, that, when the war is actually raging most furiously, they
will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts, without
thinking what harm might befall them." Then their eyes seem to be set
at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know,
with the best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And, as
their own belief in guineas is perfect, they readily, on all occasions,
apply the pecuniary argument as final. Thus when the Rochester rappings
began to be heard of in England, a man deposited L100 in a sealed box in
the Dublin Bank, and then advertised in the newspapers to all
somnambulists, mesmerizers, and others, that whoever could tell him the
number of his note should have the money. He let it lie there six
months, the newspapers now and then, at his instance, stimulating the
attention of the adepts; but none could ever tell him; and he said, "Now
let me never be bothered more with this proven lie." It is told of a
good Sir John, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and made up his
mind; then the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak, he
found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, "So help me
God! I will never listen to evidence again." Any number of delightful
examples of this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I knew
a very worthy man,--a magistrate, I believe he was, in the town of
Derby,--who went to the opera, to see Malibrau. In one scene, the
heroine was to rush across a ruined bridge. Mr. B. arose, and mildly
yet firmly called the attention of the audience and the performers to
the fact that, in his judgment, the bridge was unsafe! This English
stolidity contrasts with French wit and tact. The French, it is
commonly said, have greatly more influence in Europe than the English.
What influence the English have is by brute force of wealth and power;
that of the French by affinity and talent. The Italian is subtle, the
Spaniard treacherous: tortures, it was said, could never wrest from an
Egyptian the confession of a secret. None of these traits belong to the
Englishman. His choler and conceit force everything out. Defoe, who
knew his countrymen well, says of them:--
"In close intrigue, their faculty 's but weak,
For generally whate'er they know, they speak,
And often their own counsels undermine
By mere infirmity without design;
From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed,
That English treasons never can succeed;
For they 're so open-hearted, you may know
Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too."