England is the best of actual nations. It is no ideal framework, it is
an old pile built in different ages, with repairs, additions, and
makeshifts; but you see the poor best you have got. London is the
epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day. Broad-fronted,
broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the
points of compass; they constitute the modern world, they have earned
their vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession.
They are well marked and differing from other leading races. England is
tender-hearted. Rome was not. England is not so public in its bias;
private life is its place of honor. Truth in private life, untruth in
public, marks these home-loving men. Their political conduct is not
decided by general views, but by internal intrigues and personal and
family interest. They cannot readily see beyond England. The history
of Rome and Greece, when written by their scholars, degenerates into
English party pamphlets. They cannot see beyond England, nor in England
can they transcend the interests of the governing classes. "English
principles" mean a primary regard to the interests of property.
England, Scotland, and Ireland combine to check the colonies. England
and Scotland combine to check Irish manufactures and trade. England
rallies at home to check Scotland. In England, the strong classes check
the weaker. In the home population of near thirty millions, there are
but one million voters. The Church punishes dissent, punishes
education. Down to a late day, marriages performed by dissenters were
illegal. A bitter class-legislation gives power to those who are rich
enough to buy a law. The game-laws are a proverb of oppression.
Pauperism incrusts and clogs the state, and in hard times becomes
hideous. In bad seasons, the porridge was diluted. Multitudes lived
miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware. In cities, the children are
trained to beg, until they shall be old enough to rob. Men and women
were convicted of poisoning scores of children for burial fees. In
Irish districts, men deteriorated in size and shape. The nose sunk, the
gums were exposed, with diminished brain and brutal form. During the
Australian emigration, multitudes were rejected by the commissioners as
being too emaciated for useful colonists. During the Russian war, few
of those that offered as recruits were found up to the medical standard,
though it had been reduced.
The foreign policy of England, though ambitious and lavish of money, has
not often been generous or just. It has a principal regard to the
interest of trade, checked however by the aristocratic bias of the
ambassador, which usually puts him in sympathy with the continental
Courts. It sanctioned the partition of Poland, it betrayed Genoa,
Sicily, Parga, Greece, Turkey, Rome, and Hungary.
Some public regards they have. They have abolished slavery in the West
Indies, and put an end to human sacrifices in the East. At home they
have a certain statute hospitality. England keeps open doors, as a
trading country must, to all nations. It is one of their fixed ideas,
and wrathfully supported by their laws in unbroken sequence for a
thousand years. In _Magna Charta_ it was ordained, that all "merchants
shall have safe and secure conduct to go out and come into England, and
to stay there, and to pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell
by the ancient allowed customs, without any evil toll, except in time of
war, or when they shall be of any nation at war with us." It is a
statute and obliged hospitality, and peremptorily maintained. But this
shop-rule had one magnificent effect. It extends its cold unalterable
courtesy to political exiles of every opinion, and is a fact which might
give additional light to that portion of the planet seen from the
farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts no sweetness into
their unaccommodating manners, no check on that puissant nationality
which makes their existence incompatible with all that is not English.
What we must say about a nation is a superficial dealing with symptoms.
We cannot go deep enough into the biography of the spirit who never
throws himself entire into one hero, but delegates his energy in parts
or spasms to vicious and defective individuals. But the wealth of the
source is seen in the plenitude of English nature. What variety of
power and talent; what facility and plenteousness of knighthood,
lordship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty; what a proud chivalry is indicated
in "Collins's Peerage," through eight hundred years! What dignity
resting on what reality and stoutness! What courage in war, what sinew
in labor, what cunning workmen, what inventors and engineers, what
seamen and pilots, what clerks and scholars! No one man and no few men
can represent them. It is a people of myriad personalities. Their
many-headedness is owing to the advantageous position of the middle
class, who are always the source of letters and science. Hence the vast
plenty of their aesthetic production. As they are many-headed, so they
are many-nationed; their colonization annexes archipelagoes and
continents, and their speech seems destined to be the universal language
of men. I have noted the reserve of power in the English temperament.
In the island, they never let out all the length of all the reins, there
is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment or ecstasy of will or intellect,
like that of the Arabs in the time of Mahomet, or like that which
intoxicated France in 1789. But who would see the uncoiling of that
tremendous spring, the explosion of their well-husbanded forces, must
follow the swarms which, pouring now for two hundred years from the
British islands, have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted, through
all climates, mainly following the belt of empire, the temperate zones,
carrying the Saxon seed, with its instinct for liberty and law, for arts
and for thought,--acquiring under some skies a more electric energy than
the native air allows,--to the conquest of the globe. Their colonial
policy, obeying the necessities of a vast empire, has become liberal.
Canada and Australia have been contented with substantial independence.
They are expiating the wrongs of India, by benefits: first, in works for
the irrigation of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs; and secondly,
in the instruction of the people, to qualify them for self-government,
when the British power shall be finally called home.
Their mind is in a state of arrested development,--a divine cripple like
Vulcan; a blind _savant_ like Huber and Sanderson. They do not occupy
themselves on matters of general and lasting import, but on a corporeal
civilization, on goods that perish in the using. But they read with
good intent, and what they learn they incarnate. The English mind turns
every abstraction it can receive into a portable utensil, or a working
institution. Such is their tenacity, and such their practical turn, that
they hold all they gain. Hence we say, that only the English race can
be trusted with freedom,--freedom which is double-edged and dangerous to
any but the wise and robust. The English designate the kingdoms emulous
of free institutions as the sentimental nations. Their own culture is
not an outside varnish, but is thorough and secular in families and the
race. They are oppressive with their temperament, and all the more that
they are refined. I have sometimes seen them walk with my countrymen,
when I was forced to allow them every advantage, and their companions
seemed bags of bones. There is cramp limitation in their habit of
thought, sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard to the
ground with his claws, lest he should be thrown on his back. There is a
drag of inertia which resists reform in every shape; law-reform,
army-reform, extension of suffrage, Jewish franchise, Catholic
emancipation,--the abolition of slavery, of impressment, penal code, and
entails. They praise this drag, under the formula, that it is the
excellence of the British constitution, that no law can anticipate the
public opinion. These poor tortoises must hold hard, for they feel no
wings sprouting at their shoulders. Yet somewhat divine warms at their
heart, and waits a happier hour. It hides in their sturdy will.
"Will," said the old philosophy, "is the measure of power," and
personality is the token of this race. _Quid vult valde vult_. What
they do they do with a will. You cannot account for their success by
their Christianity, commerce, charter, common law, Parliament, or
letters, but by the contumacious sharp-tongued energy of English
_naturel_, with a poise impossible to disturb, which makes all these its
instruments. They are slow and reticent, and are like a dull good horse
which lets every nag pass him, but with whip and spur will run down
every racer in the field. They are right in their feeling, though wrong
in their speculation.
The feudal system survives in the steep inequality of property and
privilege, in the limited franchise, in the social barriers which
confine patronage and promotion to a caste, and still more in the
submissive ideas pervading these people. The fagging of the schools is
repeated in the social classes. An Englishman shows no mercy to those
below him in the social scale, as he looks for none from those above
him; any forbearance from his superiors surprises him, and they suffer
in his good opinion. But the feudal system can be seen with less pain
on large historical grounds. It was pleaded in mitigation of the rotten
borough, that it worked well, that substantial justice was done. Fox,
Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan, Romilly, or whatever
national men, were by this means sent to Parliament, when their return
by large constituencies would have been doubtful. So now we say, that
the right measures of England are the men it bred; that it has yielded
more able men in five hundred years than any other nation; and, though
we must not play Providence, and balance the chances of producing ten
great men against the comfort of ten thousand mean men, yet
retrospectively we may strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one
Shakspeare, one Milton, one Sidney, one Raleigh, one Wellington, to a
million foolish democrats.
The American system is more democratic, more humane; yet the American
people do not yield better or more able men, or more inventions or books
or benefits, than the English. Congress is not wiser or better than
Parliament. France has abolished its suffocating old _regime_, but is
not recently marked by any more wisdom or virtue.
The power of performance has not been exceeded,--the creation of value.
The English have given importance to individuals, a principal end and
fruit of every society. Every man is allowed and encouraged to be what
he is, and is guarded in the indulgence of his whim. "Magna Charta,"
said Rushworth, "is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign." By
this general activity, and by this sacredness of individuals, they have
in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the
land of patriots, martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of
which it emerged should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island
famous for immortal laws, for the announcements of original right which
make the stone tables of liberty.
A few days after my arrival at Manchester, in November, 1847, the
Manchester Athenaeum gave its annual Banquet in the Free-Trade Hall.
With other guests, I was invited to be present, and to address the
company. In looking over recently a newspaper report of my remarks, I
incline to reprint it, as fitly expressing the feeling with which I
entered England, and which agrees well enough with the more deliberate
results of better acquaintance recorded in the foregoing pages. Sir
Archibald Alison, the historian, presided, and opened the meeting with a
speech. He was followed by Mr. Cobden, Lord Brackley, and others, among
whom was Mr. Cruikshank, one of the contributors to "Punch." Mr.
Dickens's letter of apology for his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, who
had been announced, did not appear. On being introduced to the meeting
I said:--
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is pleasant to me to meet this great and
brilliant company, and doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many
distinguished persons on this platform. But I have known all these
persons already. When I was at home, they were as near to me as they
are to you. The arguments of the League and its leader are known to all
the friends of free trade. The gayeties and genius, the political, the
social, the parietal wit of "Punch" go duly every fortnight to every boy
and girl in Boston and New York. Sir, when I came to sea, I found the
"History of Europe"[26] on the ship's cabin table, the property of the
captain;--a sort of programme or play-bill to tell the seafaring
New-Englander what he shall find on his landing here. And as for
Dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists to print on, where it
is not found; no man who can read, that does not read it, and, if he
cannot, he finds some charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it.
[26] By Sir A. Alison.
But these things are not for me to say; these compliments, though true,
would better come from one who felt and understood these merits more. I
am not here to exchange civilities with you, but rather to speak of that
which I am sure interests these gentlemen more than their own praises;
of that which is good in holidays and working-days, the same in one
century and in another century. That which lures a solitary American in
the woods with the wish to see England, is the moral peculiarity of the
Saxon race,--its commanding sense of right and wrong,--the love and
devotion to that,--this is the imperial trait, which arms them with the
sceptre of the globe. It is this which lies at the foundation of that
aristocratic character, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries,
so that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose
this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's
shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity
of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one
element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship,
that homage of man to man, running through all classes,--the electing of
worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of kindness and warm and
stanch support, from year to year, from youth to age,--which is alike
lovely and honorable to those who render and those who receive
it;--which stands in strong contrast with the superficial attachments of
other races, their excessive courtesy, and short-lived connection.
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it be, I
have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates
real and not pretended joys; and I think it just, in this time of gloom
and commercial disaster, of affliction and beggary in these districts,
that on these very accounts I speak of, you should not fail to keep your
literary anniversary. I seem to hear you say, that, for all that is
come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet or one oak-leaf the
braveries of our annual feast. For I must tell you, I was given to
understand in my childhood, that the British island from which my
forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of serene sky and
roses and music and merriment all the year round, no, but a cold, foggy,
mournful country, where nothing grew well in the open air, but robust
men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful fibre and endurance;
that their best parts were slowly revealed; their virtues did not come
out until they quarrelled: they did not strike twelve the first time;
good lovers, good haters, and you could know little about them till you
had seen them long, and little good of them till you had seen them in
action; that in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in adversity
they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that the wise ancients did not
praise the ship parting with flying colors from the port, but only that
brave sailer which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, stript
of her banners, but having ridden out the storm? And so, gentlemen, I
feel in regard to this aged England, with the possessions, honors, and
trophies, and also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering
around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to many old customs
which cannot be suddenly changed; pressed upon by the transitions of
trade, and new and all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and
competing populations,--I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well
remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of
instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in
storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a
cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still
daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this,
I say, All hail! mother of nations, mother of heroes, with strength
still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute
the policy which the mind and heart of mankind require in the present
hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the
thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. So be it! so let it
be! If it be not so, if the courage of England goes with the chances of
a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of Massachusetts, and
my own Indian stream, and say to my countrymen, the old race are all
gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth remain on
the Alleghauy ranges, or nowhere.
THE END.
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.