Ability
from English Traits (1856), Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Saxon and the Northman are both
Scandinavians. History does not allow us to fix
the limits of the application of these names with any accuracy; but
from the residence of a portion of these people in France, and from
some effect of that powerful soil on their blood and manners, the
Norman has come popularly to represent in England the aristocratic,
� and the Saxon the democratic principle. And
though, I doubt not, the nobles are of both tribes, and the workers
of both, yet we are forced to use the names a little mythically,
one to represent the worker, and the other the enjoyer.
The island was a prize for the best race. Each
of the dominant races tried its fortune in turn.
The Ph渘ician, the Celt, and the Goth, had already got
in. The Roman came, but in the very day when his
fortune culminated. He looked in the eyes of a
new people that was to supplant his own. He disembarked his
legions, erected his camps and towers, � presently he heard bad
news from Italy, and worse and worse, every year; at last, he made
a handsome compliment of roads and walls, and departed. But the
Saxon seriously settled in the land, builded, tilled, fished, and
traded, with German truth and adhesiveness. The Dane came, and
divided with him. Last of all, the Norman, or French-Dane, arrived,
and formally conquered, harried and ruled the kingdom. A century
later, it came out, that the Saxon had the most bottom and
longevity, had managed to make the victor speak the language and
accept the law and usage of the victim; forced the baron to dictate
Saxon terms to Norman kings; and, step by step, got all the
essential securities of civil liberty invented and
confirmed. The genius of the race and the genius
of the place conspired to this effect. The island
is lucrative to free labor, but not worth possession on other
terms. The race was so intellectual, that a
feudal or military tenure could not last longer than the
war. The power of the Saxon-Danes, so thoroughly
beaten in the war, that the name of English and villein were
synonymous, yet so vivacious as to extort charters from the kings,
stood on the strong personality of these people. Sense and economy
must rule in a world which is made of sense and economy, and the
banker, with his seven per cent, drives the earl out of his castle.
A nobility of soldiers cannot keep down a commonalty of shrewd
scientific persons. What signifies a pedigree of a hundred links,
against a cotton-spinner with steam in his mill; or, against a
company of broad-shouldered Liverpool merchants, for whom
Stephenson and Brunel are contriving locomotives and a tubular
bridge?
These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They have the taste for
toil, a distaste for pleasure or repose, and the telescopic
appreciation of distant gain. They are the wealth-makers, � and by
dint of mental faculty, which has its own conditions. The Saxon
works after liking, or, only for himself; and to set him at work,
and to begin to draw his monstrous values out of barren Britain,
all dishonor, fret, and barrier must be removed, and then his
energies begin to play.
The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by Trolls, � a kind
of goblin men, with vast power of work and skilful production, �
divine stevedores, carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, swift
to reward every kindness done them, with gifts of gold and silver.
In all English history, this dream comes to pass. Certain Trolls or
working brains, under the names of Alfred, Bede, Caxton, Bracton,
Camden, Drake, Selden, Dugdale, Newton, Gibbon, Brindley, Watt,
Wedgwood, dwell in the troll-mounts of Britain, and turn the sweat
of their face to power and renown.
If the race is good, so is the place. Nobody landed on this
spellbound island with impunity. The enchantments of barren shingle
and rough weather, transformed every adventurer into a laborer.
Each vagabond that arrived bent his neck to the yoke of gain, or
found the air too tense for him. The strong survived, the weaker
went to the ground. Even the pleasure-hunters and sots of England
are of a tougher texture. A hard temperament had been formed by
Saxon and Saxon-Dane, and such of these French or Normans as could
reach it, were naturalized in every sense.
All the admirable expedients or means hit upon in England must
be looked at as growths or irresistible offshoots of the expanding
mind of the race. A man of that brain thinks and acts thus; and his
neighbor, being afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he is
rich, and called a baron, or a duke, thinks the same thing, and is
ready to allow the justice of the thought and act in his retainer
or tenant, though sorely against his baronial or ducal will.
The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed of mastiffs,
so fierce, that, when their teeth were set, you must cut their
heads off to part them. The man was like his dog. The people have
that nervous bilious temperament, which is known by medical men to
resist every means employed to make its possessor subservient to
the will of others. The English game is main force to main force,
the planting of foot to foot, fair play and open field, � a rough
tug without trick or dodging, till one or both come to pieces. King
Ethelwald spoke the language of his race, when he planted himself
at Wimborne, and said, 'he would do one of two things, or there
live, or there lie.' They hate craft and subtlety. They neither
poison, nor waylay, nor assassinate; and, when they have pounded
each other to a poultice, they will shake hands and be friends for
the remainder of their lives.
You shall trace these Gothic touches at school, at country
fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. No artifice, no breach
of truth and plain dealing, � not so much as secret ballot, is
suffered in the island. In parliament, the tactics of the
opposition is to resist every step of the government, by a pitiless
attack: and in a bargain, no prospect of advantage is so dear to
the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is mortifying.
Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and James, who won the
sea-fight of Scanderoon, was a model Englishman in his day. "His
person was handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocution and
noble address, that, had he been dropt out of the clouds in any
part of the world, he would have made himself respected: he was
skilled in six tongues, and master of arts and arms."(*1) Sir
Kenelm wrote a book, "Of Bodies and of Souls," in which he
propounds, that "syllogisms do breed or rather are all the variety
of man's life. They are the steps by which we walk in all our
businesses. Man, as he is man, doth nothing else but weave such
chains. Whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work, he doth as
deficient from the nature of man: and, if he do aught beyond this,
by breaking out into divers sorts of exterior actions, he findeth,
nevertheless, in this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art,
the cause, the rule, the bounds, and the model of it."(*2)
There spoke the genius of the English people. There is a
necessity on them to be logical. They would hardly greet the good
that did not logically fall, � as if it excluded their own merit,
or shook their understandings. They are jealous of minds that have
much facility of association, from an instinctive fear that the
seeing many relations to their thought might impair this serial
continuity and lucrative concentration. They are impatient of
genius, or of minds addicted to contemplation, and cannot conceal
their contempt for sallies of thought, however lawful, whose steps
they cannot count by their wonted rule. Neither do they reckon
better a syllogism that ends in syllogism. For they have a supreme
eye to facts, and theirs is a logic that brings salt to soup,
hammer to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters, and
chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one on which words
make no impression. Their mind is not dazzled by its own means, but
locked and bolted to results. They love men, who, like Samuel
Johnson, a doctor in the schools, would jump out of his syllogism
the instant his major proposition was in danger, to save that, at
all hazards. Their practical vision is spacious, and they can hold
many threads without entangling them. All the steps they orderly
take; but with the high logic of never confounding the minor and
major proposition; keeping their eye on their aim, in all the
complicity and delay incident to the several series of means they
employ. There is room in their minds for this and that, � a science
of degrees. In the courts, the independence of the judges and the
loyalty of the suitors are equally excellent. In Parliament, they
have hit on that capital invention of freedom, a constitutional
opposition. And when courts and parliament are both deaf, the
plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his weapon of defence
from year to year is the obstinate reproduction of the grievance,
with calculations and estimates. But, meantime, he is drawing
numbers and money to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy
fails, right of revolution is at the bottom of his charter-box.
They are bound to see their measure carried, and stick to it
through ages of defeat.
Into this English logic, however, an infusion of justice enters,
not so apparent in other races, � a belief in the existence of two
sides, and the resolution to see fair play. There is on every
question, an appeal from the assertion of the parties, to the proof
of what is asserted. They are impious in their scepticism of a
theory, but kiss the dust before a fact. Is it a machine, is it a
charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it a candidate on the
hustings, � the universe of Englishmen will suspend their judgment,
until the trial can be had. They are not to be led by a phrase,
they want a working plan, a working machine, a working
constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by the issue,
and reject all preconceived theories. In politics they put blunt
questions, which must be answered; who is to pay the taxes? what
will you do for trade? what for corn? what for the spinner?
This singular fairness and its results strike the French with
surprise. Philip de Commines says, "Now, in my opinion, among all
the sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public
good is best attended to, and the least violence exercised on the
people, is that of England." Life is safe, and personal rights; and
what is freedom, without security? whilst, in France, 'fraternity,'
'equality,' and 'indivisible unity,' are names for assassination.
Montesquieu said, "England is the freest country in the world. If a
man in England had as many enemies as hairs on his head, no harm
would happen to him."
Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and their
realistic logic or coupling of means to ends, have given them the
leadership of the modern world. Montesquieu said, "No people have
true common sense but those who are born in England." This common
sense is a perception of all the conditions of our earthly
existence, of laws that can be stated, and of laws that cannot be
stated, or that are learned only by practice, in which allowance
for friction is made. They are impious in their scepticism of
theory, and in high departments they are cramped and sterile. But
the unconditional surrender to facts, and the choice of means to
reach their ends, are as admirable as with ants and bees.
The bias of the nation is a passion for utility. They love the
lever, the screw, and pulley, the Flanders draught-horse, the
waterfall, wind-mills, tide-mills; the sea and the wind to bear
their freight ships. More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which
glitters among their crown jewels, they prize that dull pebble
which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles
of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world.
Now, their toys are steam and galvanism. They are heavy at the fine
arts, but adroit at the coarse; not good in jewelry or mosaics, but
the best iron-masters, colliers, wool-combers, and tanners, in
Europe. They apply themselves to agriculture, to draining, to
resisting encroachments of sea, wind, travelling sands, cold and
wet sub-soil; to fishery, to manufacture of indispensable staples,
� salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass, pottery, and brick, � to
bees and silkworms; � and by their steady combinations they
succeed. A manufacturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes
which was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. You dine with a
gentleman on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons, poultry, mushrooms,
and pine-apples, all the growth of his estate. They are neat
husbands for ordering all their tools pertaining to house and
field. All are well kept. There is no want and no waste. They study
use and fitness in their building, in the order of their dwellings,
and in their dress. The Frenchman invented the ruffle, the
Englishman added the shirt. The Englishman wears a sensible coat
buttoned to the chin, of rough but solid and lasting texture. If he
is a lord, he dresses a little worse than a commoner. They have
diffused the taste for plain substantial hats, shoes, and coats
through Europe. They think him the best dressed man, whose dress is
so fit for his use that you cannot notice or remember to describe
it.
They secure the essentials in their diet, in their arts, and
manufactures. Every article of cutlery shows, in its shape, thought
and long experience of workmen. They put the expense in the right
place, as, in their sea-steamers, in the solidity of the machinery
and the strength of the boat. The admirable equipment of their
arctic ships carries London to the pole. They build roads,
aqueducts, warm and ventilate houses. And they have impressed their
directness and practical habit on modern civilization.
In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody breaks who ought
not to break; and, that, if he do not make trade every thing, it
will make him nothing; and acts on this belief. The spirit of
system, attention to details, and the subordination of details, or,
the not driving things too finely, (which is charged on the
Germans,) constitute that despatch of business, which makes the
mercantile power of England.
In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He is of the opinion
of Civilis, his German ancestor, whom Tacitus reports as holding
"that the gods are on the side of the strongest;"�-a sentence which
Bonaparte unconsciously translated, when he said, "that he had
noticed, that Providence always favored the heaviest battalion."
Their military science propounds that if the weight of the
advancing column is greater than that of the resisting, the latter
is destroyed. Therefore Wellington, when he came to the army in
Spain, had every man weighed, first with accoutrements, and then
without; believing that the force of an army depended on the weight
and power of the individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. Lord
Palmerston told the House of Commons, that more care is taken of
the health and comfort of English troops than of any other troops
in the world; and that, hence the English can put more men into the
rank, on the day of action, on the field of battle, than any other
army. Before the bombardment of the Danish forts in the Baltic,
Nelson spent day after day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting
service of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's celebrated
man渦vre of breaking the line of sea-battle, and Nelson's feat of
doubling, or stationing his ships one on the outer bow, and another
on the outer quarter of each of the enemy's were only translations
into naval tactics of Bonaparte's rule of concentration. Lord
Collingwood was accustomed to tell his men, that, if they could
fire three well-directed broadsides in five minutes, no vessel
could resist them; and, from constant practice, they came to do it
in three minutes and a half.
But conscious that no race of better men exists, they rely most
on the simplest means; and do not like ponderous and difficult
tactics, but delight to bring the affair hand to hand, where the
victory lies with the strength, courage, and endurance of the
individual combatants. They adopt every improvement in rig, in
motor, in weapons, but they fundamentally believe that the best
stratagem in naval war, is to lay your ship close alongside of the
enemy's ship, and bring all your guns to bear on him, until you or
he go to the bottom. This is the old fashion, which never goes out
of fashion, neither in nor out of England.
It is not usually a point of honor, nor a religious sentiment,
and never any whim that they will shed their blood for; but usually
property, and right measured by property, that breeds revolution.
They have no Indian taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French taste for
a badge or a proclamation. The Englishman is peaceably minding his
business, and earning his day's wages. But if you offer to lay hand
on his day's wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or his
shop, he will fight to the Judgment. Magna-charta, jury-trial,
habeas-corpus, star-chamber, ship-money, Popery, Plymouth-colony,
American Revolution, are all questions involving a yeoman's right
to his dinner, and, except as touching that, would not have lashed
the British nation to rage and revolt.
Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order, and of
calculation, it must be owned they are capable of larger views; but
the indulgence is expensive to them, costs great crises, or
accumulations of mental power. In common, the horse works best with
blinders. Nothing is more in the line of English thought, than our
unvarnished Connecticut question, "Pray, sir, how do you get your
living when you are at home?" The questions of freedom, of
taxation, of privilege, are money questions. Heavy fellows, steeped
in beer and fleshpots, they are hard of hearing and dim of sight.
Their drowsy minds need to be flagellated by war and trade and
politics and persecution. They cannot well read a principle, except
by the light of fagots and of burning towns.
Tacitus says of the Germans, "powerful only in sudden efforts,
they are impatient of toil and labor." This highly-destined race,
if it had not somewhere added the chamber of patience to its brain,
would not have built London. I know not from which of the tribes
and temperaments that went to the composition of the people this
tenacity was supplied, but they clinch every nail they drive. They
have no running for luck, and no immoderate speed. They spend
largely on their fabric, and await the slow return. Their leather
lies tanning seven years in the vat. At Rogers's mills, in
Sheffield, where I was shown the process of making a razor and a
penknife, I was told there is no luck in making good steel; that
they make no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the
thousand is good. And that is characteristic of all their work, �
no more is attempted than is done.
When Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard, he is told that
"nobody is permitted to remain here, unless he understand some art,
and excel in it all other men." The same question is still put to
the posterity of Thor. A nation of laborers, every man is trained
to some one art or detail, and aims at perfection in that; not
content unless he has something in which he thinks he surpasses all
other men. He would rather not do any thing at all, than not do it
well. I suppose no people have such thoroughness; � from the
highest to the lowest, every man meaning to be master of his
art.
"To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the end of a speech
in debate: "no," said an Englishman, "but to set your shoulder at
the wheel, � to advance the business." Sir Samuel Romilly refused
to speak in popular assemblies, confining himself to the House of
Commons, where a measure can be carried by a speech. The business
of the House of Commons is conducted by a few persons, but these
are hard-worked. Sir Robert Peel "knew the Blue Books by heart."
His colleagues and rivals carry Hansard in their heads. The high
civil and legal offices are not beds of ease, but posts which exact
frightful amounts of mental labor. Many of the great leaders, like
Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Romilly, are soon worked to death. They
are excellent judges England of a good worker, and when they find
one, like Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, Sir William Coventry,
Ashley, Burke, Thurlow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, or Russell,
there is nothing too good or too high for him.
They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a public aim.
Private persons exhibit, in scientific and antiquarian researches,
the same pertinacity as the nation showed in the coalitions in
which it yoked Europe against the empire of Bonaparte, one after
the other defeated, and still renewed, until the sixth hurled him
from his seat.
Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of his father, who
had made the catalogue of the stars of the northern hemisphere,
expatriated himself for years at the Cape of Good Hope, finished
his inventory of the southern heaven, came home, and redacted it in
eight years more; � a work whose value does not begin until thirty
years have elapsed, and thenceforward a record to all ages of the
highest import. The Admiralty sent out the Arctic expeditions year
after year, in search of Sir John Franklin, until, at last, they
have threaded their way through polar pack and Behring's Straits,
and solved the geographical problem. Lord Elgin, at Athens, saw the
imminent ruin of the Greek remains, set up his scaffoldings, in
spite of epigrams, and, after five years' labor to collect them,
got his marbles on shipboard. The ship struck a rock, and went to
the bottom. He had them all fished up, by divers, at a vast
expense, and brought to London; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli,
and Canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to be his
applauders. In the same spirit, were the excavation and research by
Sir Charles Fellowes, for the Xanthian monument; and of Layard, for
his Nineveh sculptures.
The nation sits in the immense city they have builded, a London
extended into every man's mind, though he live in Van Dieman's Land
or Capetown. Faithful performance of what is undertaken to be
performed, they honor in themselves, and exact in others, as
certificate of equality with themselves. The modern world is
theirs. They have made and make it day by day. The commercial
relations of the world are so intimately drawn to London, that
every dollar on earth contributes to the strength of the English
government. And if all the wealth in the planet should perish by
war or deluge, they know themselves competent to replace it.
They have approved their Saxon blood, by their sea-going
qualities; their descent from Odin's smiths, by their hereditary
skill in working in iron; their British birth, by husbandry and
immense wheat harvests; and justified their occupancy of the centre
of habitable land, by their supreme ability and cosmopolitan
spirit. They have tilled, builded, forged, spun, and woven. They
have made the island a thoroughfare; and London a shop, a
law-court, a record-office, and scientific bureau, inviting to
strangers; a sanctuary to refugees of every political and religious
opinion; and such a city, that almost every active man, in any
nation, finds himself, at one time or other, forced to visit
it.
In every path of practical activity, they have gone even with
the best. There is no secret of war, in which they have not shown
mastery. The steam-chamber of Watt, the locomotive of Stephenson,
the cotton-mule of Roberts, perform the labor of the world. There
is no department of literature, of science, or of useful art, in
which they have not produced a first-rate book. It is England,
whose opinion is waited for on the merit of a new invention, an
improved science. And in the complications of the trade and
politics of their vast empire, they have been equal to every
exigency, with counsel and with conduct. Is it their luck, or is it
in the chambers of their brain, � it is their commercial advantage,
that whatever light appears in better method or happy invention,
breaks out in their race. They are a family to which a destiny
attaches, and the Banshee has sworn that a male heir shall never be
wanting. They have a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the
vigilance of party criticism insures the selection of a competent
person.
A proof of the energy of the British people, is the highly
artificial construction of the whole fabric. The climate and
geography, I said, were factitious, as if the hands of man had
arranged the conditions. The same character pervades the whole
kingdom. Bacon said, "Rome was a state not subject to paradoxes;"
but England subsists by antagonisms and contradictions. The
foundations of its greatness are the rolling waves; and, from first
to last, it is a museum of anomalies. This foggy and rainy country
furnishes the world with astronomical observations. Its short
rivers do not afford water-power, but the land shakes under the
thunder of the mills. There is no gold mine of any importance, but
there is more gold in England than in all other countries. It is
too far north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all
countries are in its docks. The French Comte de Lauraguais said,
"no fruit ripens in England but a baked apple"; but oranges and
pine-apples are as cheap in London as in the Mediterranean. The
Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom House Returns bear out to the
letter the vaunt of Pope,
"Let India boast her palms, nor envy we
The weeping amber, nor the spicy tree,
While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn."
The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of
artificial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell, created sheep and
cows and horses to order, and breeds in which every thing was
omitted but what is economical. The cow is sacrificed to her bag,
the ox to his surloin. Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the
cattle, and converts the stable to a chemical factory. The rivers,
lakes and ponds, too much fished, or obstructed by factories, are
artificially filled with the eggs of salmon, turbot and
herring.
Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire are
unhealthy and too barren to pay rent. By cylindrical tiles, and
guttapercha tubes, five millions of acres of bad land have been
drained and put on equality with the best, for rape-culture and
grass. The climate too, which was already believed to have become
milder and drier by the enormous consumption of coal, is so far
reached by this new action, that fogs and storms are said to
disappear. In due course, all England will be drained, and rise a
second time out of the waters. The latest step was to call in the
aid of steam to agriculture. Steam is almost an Englishman. I do
not know but they will send him to Parliament, next, to make laws.
He weaves, forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must pump, grind,
dig, and plough for the farmer. The markets created by the
manufacturing population have erected agriculture into a great
thriving and spending industry. The value of the houses in Britain
is equal to the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all kinds are
cheaper than the natural resources. No man can afford to walk, when
the parliamentary-train carries him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners
are cheaper than daylight in numberless floors in the cities. All
the houses in London buy their water. The English trade does not
exist for the exportation of native products, but on its
manufactures, or the making well every thing which is ill made
elsewhere. They make ponchos for the Mexican, bandannas for the
Hindoo, ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, laces for
the Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons for kings.
The Board of Trade caused the best models of Greece and Italy to
be placed within the reach of every manufacturing population. They
caused to be translated from foreign languages and illustrated by
elaborate drawings, the most approved works of Munich, Berlin, and
Paris. They have ransacked Italy to find new forms, to add a grace
to the products of their looms, their potteries, and their
foundries.(*3)
The nearer we look, the more artificial is their social system.
Their law is a network of fictions. Their property, a scrip or
certificate of right to interest on money that no man ever saw.
Their social classes are made by statute. Their ratios of power and
representation are historical and legal. The last Reform-bill took
away political power from a mound, a ruin, and a stone-wall, whilst
Birmingham and Manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of Europe,
had no representative. Purity in the elective Parliament is secured
by the purchase of seats.(*4) Foreign power is kept by armed
colonies; power at home, by a standing army of police. The pauper
lives better than the free laborer; the thief better than the
pauper; and the transported felon better than the one under
imprisonment. The crimes are factitious, as smuggling, poaching,
non-conformity, heresy and treason. Better, they say in England,
kill a man than a hare. The sovereignty of the seas is maintained
by the impressment of seamen. "The impressment of seamen," said
Lord Eldon, "is the life of our navy." Solvency is maintained by
means of a national debt, on the principle, "if you will not lend
me the money, how can I pay you?" For the administration of
justice, Sir Samuel Romilly's expedient for clearing the arrears of
business in Chancery, was, the Chancellor's staying away entirely
from his court. Their system of education is factitious. The
Universities galvanize dead languages into a semblance of life.
Their church is artificial. The manners and customs of society are
artificial; � made up men with made up manners; � and thus the
whole is Birminghamized, and we have a nation whose existence is a
work of art; � a cold, barren, almost arctic isle, being made the
most fruitful, luxurious and imperial land in the whole earth.
Man in England submits to be a product of political economy. On
a bleak moor, a mill is built, a banking-house is opened, and men
come in, as water in a sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. Man
is made as a Birmingham button. The rapid doubling of the
population dates from Watt's steam-engine. A landlord, who owns a
province, says, "the tenantry are unprofitable; let me have sheep."
He unroofs the houses, and ships the population to America. The
nation is accustomed to the instantaneous creation of wealth. It is
the maxim of their economists, "that the greater part in value of
the wealth now existing in England, has been produced by human
hands within the last twelve months." Meantime, three or four days'
rain will reduce hundreds to starving in London.
One secret of their power is their mutual good understanding.
Not only good minds are born among them, but all the people have
good minds. Every nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has
chanced to many tribes, only one. But the intellectual organization
of the English admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas
among them all. An electric touch by any of their national ideas,
melts them into one family, and brings the hoards of power which
their individuality is always hiving, into use and play for all. Is
it the smallness of the country, or is it the pride and affection
of race, � they have solidarity, or responsibleness, and trust in
each other.
Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is more lasting
than the cloth. They embrace their cause with more tenacity than
their life. Though not military, yet every common subject by the
poll is fit to make a soldier of. These private reserved mute
family-men can adopt a public end with all their heat, and this
strength of affection makes the romance of their heroes. The
difference of rank does not divide the national heart. The Danish
poet Ohlenschlager complains, that who writes in Danish, writes to
two hundred readers. In Germany, there is one speech for the
learned, and another for the masses, to that extent, that, it is
said, no sentiment or phrase from the works of any great German
writer is ever heard among the lower classes. But in England, the
language of the noble is the language of the poor. In Parliament,
in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers rise to thought and
passion, the language becomes idiomatic; the people in the street
best understand the best words. And their language seems drawn from
the Bible, the common law, and the works of Shakspeare, Bacon,
Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, Burns, and Scott. The island has
produced two or three of the greatest men that ever existed, but
they were not solitary in their own time. Men quickly embodied what
Newton found out, in Greenwich observatories, and practical
navigation. The boys know all that Hutton knew of strata, or Dalton
of atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels; and these studies, once
dangerous, are in fashion. So what is invented or known in
agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in art, or in literature,
and antiquities. A great ability, not amassed on a few giants, but
poured into the general mind, so that each of them could at a pinch
stand in the shoes of the other; and they are more bound in
character, than differenced in ability or in rank. The laborer is a
possible lord. The lord is a possible basket-maker. Every man
carries the English system in his brain, knows what is confided to
him, and does therein the best he can. The chancellor carries
England on his mace, the midshipman at the point of his dirk, the
smith on his hammer, the cook in the bowl of his spoon; the
postilion cracks his whip for England, and the sailor times his
oars to "God save the King!" The very felons have their pride in
each other's English stanchness. In politics and in war, they hold
together as by hooks of steel. The charm in Nelson's history, is,
the unselfish greatness; the assurance of being supported to the
uttermost by those whom he supports to the uttermost. Whilst they
are some ages ahead of the rest of the world in the art of living;
whilst in some directions they do not represent the modern spirit,
but constitute it, � this vanguard of civility and power they
coldly hold, marching in phalanx, lockstep, foot after foot, file
after file of heroes, ten thousand deep.
