The English are a nation of humorists. Individual right is pushed to
the uttermost bound compatible with public order. Property is so
perfect, that it seems the craft of that race, and not to exist
elsewhere. The king cannot step on an acre which the peasant refuses to
sell. A testator endows a dog or a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere
with his absurdity. Every individual has his particular way of living,
which he pushes to folly, and the decided sympathy of his compatriots is
engaged to back up Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors, and
horse-guards. There is no freak so ridiculous but some Englishman has
attempted to immortalize by money and law. British citizenship is as
omnipotent as Roman was. Mr. Cockayne is very sensible of this. The
pursy man means by freedom the right to do as he pleases, and does wrong
in order to feel his freedom, and makes a conscience of persisting in
it.
He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so small. His confidence
in the power and performance of his nation makes him provokingly
incurious about other nations. He dislikes foreigners. Swedenborg, who
lived much in England, notes "the similitude of minds among the English,
in consequence of which they contract familiarity with friends who are
of that nation, and seldom with others; and they regard foreigners, as
one looking through a telescope from the top of a palace regards those
who dwell or wander about out of the city." A much older traveller, the
Venetian who wrote the "Relation of England,"[11] in 1500, says: "The
English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to
them. They think that there are no other men than themselves, and no
other world but England; and, whenever they see a handsome foreigner,
they say that he looks like an Englishman, and it is a great pity he
should not be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of any delicacy
with a foreigner, they ask him whether such a thing is made in his
country." When he adds epithets of praise, his climax is "so English";
and when he wishes to pay you the highest compliment, he says, I should
not know you from an Englishman. France is, by its natural contrast, a
kind of blackboard on which English character draws its own traits in
chalk. This arrogance habitually exhibits itself in allusions to the
French. I suppose that all men of English blood in America, Europe, or
Asia have a secret feeling of joy that they are not French natives. Mr.
Coleridge is said to have given public thanks to God, at the close of a
lecture, that he had defended him from being able to utter a single
sentence in the French language. I have found that Englishmen have such
a good opinion of England, that the ordinary phrases, in all good
society, of postponing or disparaging one's own things in talking with a
stranger, are seriously mistaken by them for an insuppressible homage to
the merits of their nation; and the New-Yorker or Pennsylvanian who
modestly laments the disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and
savages, is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commiseration of the
whole company, who plainly account all the world out of England a heap
of rubbish.
[11] Printed by the Camden Society.
The same insular limitation pinches his foreign politics. He sticks to
his traditions and usages, and, so help him God! he will force his
island by-laws down the throat of great countries, like India, China,
Canada, Australia, and not only so, but impose Wapping on the Congress
of Vienna, and trample down all nationalities with his taxed boots.
Lord Chatham goes for liberty, and no taxation without
representation;--for that is British law; but not a hobnail shall they
dare make in America, but buy their nails in England,--for that also is
British law; and the fact that British commerce was to be re-created by
the independence of America, took them all by surprise.
In short, I am afraid that English nature is so rank and aggressive as
to be a little incompatible with every other. The world is not wide
enough for two.
But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted, the island offers a
daily worship to the old Norse god Brage, celebrated among our
Scandinavian forefathers, for his eloquence and majestic air. The
English have a steady courage, that fits them for great attempts and
endurance: they have also a petty courage, through which every man
delights in showing himself for what he is, and in doing what he can; so
that, in all companies, each of them has too good an opinion of himself
to imitate anybody. He hides no defect of his form, features, dress,
connection, or birthplace, for he thinks every circumstance belonging to
him comes recommended to you. If one of them have a bald, or a red, or
a green head, or bow legs, or a scar, or mark, or a paunch, or a
squeaking or a raven voice, he has persuaded himself that there is
something modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on him.
But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little superfluity of
self-regard in the English brain is one of the secrets of their power
and history. It sets every man on being and doing what he really is and
can. It takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary air, and encourages a
frank and manly bearing, so that each man makes the most of himself, and
loses no opportunity for want of pushing. A man's personal defects will
commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which
they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men. We
all find in these a convenient meter of character, since a little man
would be ruined by the vexation. I remember a shrewd politician, in one
of our Western cities, told me "that he had known several successful
statesmen made by their foible." And another, an ex-governor of
Illinois, said to me: "If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner
and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling
up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries."
There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously
expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and
hold him to it. Their culture generally enables the travelled English
to avoid any ridiculous extremes of this self-pleasing, and to give it
an agreeable air. Then the natural disposition is fostered by the
respect which they find entertained in the world for English ability.
It was said of Louis XIV., that his gait and air were becoming enough in
so great a monarch, yet would have been ridiculous in another man; so
the prestige of the English name warrants a certain confident bearing,
which a Frenchman or Belgian could not carry. At all events, they feel
themselves at liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone on the
subject of English merits.
An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German speaking of her party as
foreigners, exclaimed, "No, we are not foreigners; we are English: it is
you that are foreigners." They tell you daily, in London, the story of
the Frenchman and Englishman who quarrelled. Both were unwilling to
fight, but their companions put them up to it; at last, it was agreed,
that they should fight alone, in the dark, and with pistols: the candles
were put out, and the Englishman, to make sure not to hit anybody, fired
up the chimney, and brought down the Frenchman. They have no curiosity
about foreigners, and answer any information you may volunteer, with
"Oh! Oh!" until the informant makes up his mind, that they shall die in
their ignorance, for any help he will offer. There are really no limits
to this conceit, though brighter men among them make painful efforts to
be candid.
The habit of brag runs through all classes, from the _Times_ newspaper
through politicians and poets, through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and
Sydney Smith, down to the boys of Eton. In the gravest treatise on
political economy, in a philosophical essay, in books of science, one is
surprised by the most innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality.
In a tract on Corn, a most amiable and accomplished gentleman writes
thus: "Though Britain, according to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were
surrounded by a wall of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still, she
would as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she now does,
both in this secondary quality, and in the more important ones of
freedom, virtue, and science."[12]
[12] William Spence.
The English dislike the American structure of society, whilst yet trade,
mills, public education, and chartism are doing what they can to create
in England the same social condition. America is the paradise of the
economists; is the favorable exception invariably quoted to the rules of
ruin; but when he speaks directly of the Americans, the islander forgets
his philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes.
But this childish patriotism costs something, like all narrowness. The
English sway of their colonies has no root of kindness. They govern by
their arts and ability; they are more just than kind; and, whenever an
abatement of their power is felt, they have not conciliated the
affection on which to rely.
Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, province, or town, are
useful in the absence of real ones; but we must not insist on these
accidental lines. Individual traits are always triumphing over national
ones. There is no fence in metaphysics discriminating Greek, or
English, or Spanish science. AEsop and Montaigne, Cervantes and Saadi,
are men of the world; and to wave our own flag at the dinner-table or in
the University, is to carry the boisterous dulness of a fire-club into a
polite circle. Nature and destiny are always on the watch for our
follies. Nature trips us up when we strut; and there are curious
examples in history on this very point of national pride.
George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia, was a low parasite,
who got a lucrative contract to supply the army with bacon. A rogue and
informer, he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He saved his
money, embraced Arianism, collected a library, and got promoted by a
faction to the episcopal throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D.
301, George was dragged to prison; the prison was burst open by the mob,
and George was lynched, as he deserved. And this precious knave became,
in good time, Saint George of England, patron of chivalry, emblem of
victory and civility, and the pride of the best blood of the modern
world.
Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive from an
impostor. Strange, that the New World should have no better luck,--that
broad America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo Vespucci, the
pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with
Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain's mate in an
expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant
Columbus, and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. Thus
nobody can throw stones. We are equally badly off in our founders; and
the false pickle-dealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller.