I make use of the present tense, but am I speaking truly of present
England? Such powerful agencies of change have been at work during the
last thirty years; and it is difficult, nay impossible, to ascertain in
what degree they have affected the national character, thus far. One
notes the obvious: decline of conventional religion, free discussion of
the old moral standards; therewith, a growth of materialism which favours
every anarchic tendency. Is it to be feared that self-righteousness may
be degenerating into the darker vice of true hypocrisy? For the English
to lose belief in themselves--not merely in their potential goodness, but
in their pre-eminence as examples and agents of good--would mean as
hopeless a national corruption as any recorded in history. To doubt
their genuine worship, in the past, of a very high (though not, of
course, the highest) ethical ideal, is impossible for any one born and
bred in England; no less impossible to deny that those who are rightly
deemed "best" among us, the men and women of gentle or humble birth who
are not infected by the evils of the new spirit, still lead, in a very
true sense, "honest, sober, and godly" lives. Such folk, one knows, were
never in a majority, but of old they had a power which made them
veritable representatives of the English _ethos_. If they thought highly
of themselves, why, the fact justified them; if they spoke, at times, as
Pharisees, it was a fault of temper which carried with it no grave
condemnation. Hypocrisy was, of all forms of baseness, that which they
most abhorred. So is it still with their descendants. Whether these
continue to speak among us with authority, no man can certainly say. If
their power is lost, and those who talk of English hypocrisy no longer
use the word amiss, we shall soon know it.