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ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 FROM 
 
 AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 2 9i 
 
 BY 
 
 PRICE COLLIER 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 NEW YORK : : : : 1909 
 
LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two CoDies Received 
 
 UM 25 W% 
 
 ^ Copyrismt Entry 
 CLASS Cc XXc< No. 
 
 c6py s. 
 
 ^-b-^ 
 
 r'.^i 
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Published March, 1909 
 
:::> 
 
 ^0 
 
 MY WIFE KATHARINE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. First Impressions 1 
 
 II. Who Are the English ? . . . 37 
 
 III. The Land of Compromise . . 78 
 
 IV. English Home Life 133 
 
 V. Are the English Dull? . . . 176 
 
 VI. Sport 230 
 
 VII. Ireland 274 
 
 VIII. An English Country Town . .314 
 
 IX. Society 366 
 
 X. Conclusion 412 
 
ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW 
 
 I 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS 
 
 LEAVING New York on a steamer offi- 
 cered and manned by Englishmen your 
 impressions may begin from the moment 
 you put foot on board. The change from the 
 restless volubility of the Irish cab driver to the 
 icy servility of the Englishman of the servant 
 class is soothing, depressing, irritating or amus- 
 ing as the case may be. The chattering, waving, 
 gesticulating high-voiced travellers, and good- 
 byers, are apparently of no interest to the stolid 
 stewards, who move about at slower speed, 
 speak in lower tones, do what they have to do 
 with as little unnecessary expenditure of nerve, 
 and muscle, and speech power, as possible. 
 Even before the ship moves you have moved 
 from the exhilarating, bracing, bright air of in- 
 land and upland plains, to the heavier and more 
 
2 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 moist climate of an island. Movement, speech, 
 feature and bulk are different. They are all, 
 movement, speech, feature and bulk, different 
 in a way that is easily and definitely expressed 
 by one word: heavy. Later one finds that this 
 word is used accurately. The English men, 
 women, horses, vehicles, machinery, houses, 
 furniture, food, are all heavier in proportion 
 than ours. 
 
 What will you have for breakfast, if, alas, you 
 will have any breakfast the first morning out ? 
 Something very light perhaps. These islanders, 
 you soon find, have little regard for lightness. 
 A light dish of eggs in some form, a light roll, 
 fresh butter, coffee and hot milk ? Yes, of a sort, 
 but none of them light. You soon forswear 
 coffee for tea, and ere long the passive bulwark 
 of resistance wearies you into eggs and bacon, 
 and cold meat, and jams, for your first meal of 
 the day. Little things are typical. What you 
 want is not refused you, but what they have and 
 like is gradually forced upon you. Thus they 
 govern their colonies. No raising of voices, no 
 useless and prolonged discussion, no heat gen- 
 erated, no ridicule of your habits, or eulogy of 
 their own, none of these, but just slow-moving, 
 unchanging, confident bulk! 
 
 The monotonous and solemn *'yes, sir," 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 3 
 
 "thank you, sir," of the servants, may lead you 
 to suppose that at any rate this class of English 
 man and woman is servile, is lacking in the na- 
 tional trait of confidence, is perhaps amenable 
 to suggestions of a change. On the contrary, 
 this class less even than others. The manner 
 and speech are merely mechanical. The un- 
 blushing demands, either frankly open, or awk- 
 wardly surreptitious, for tips are part of the 
 day's work. They are servants, they know it, 
 they have no objection to your knowing it, and 
 most of them have little ambition to be anything 
 else. They are not in that position in the mean- 
 time, but permanently; they are not serving, 
 while waiting for something else; service is their 
 career. The American may "sling hash" at 
 Coney Island, or in a western frontier town, un- 
 til he can escape to become something else, but 
 as a vocation he does not recognize it. At first, 
 therefore, these people are puzzling, we shall 
 see later that they are a factor in the civili- 
 zation we are about to explore. They have 
 their pride, their rules of precedence, their 
 code; they are fixed, immovable, unconcerned 
 about other careers, undisturbed by hazy am- 
 bitions, and insistent upon their privileges, 
 as are all other Englishmen. They will not 
 overstep the boundary lines of your personal 
 
4 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 position, and they jealously guard the boun- 
 daries of their own. 
 
 When we come to know them better we find 
 that, although they are of all the laboring classes 
 completely unorganized, without unions or so- 
 cieties, they are the one class which has kept up 
 and increased the standard of wages. As a class 
 they have made no claims, they have not ap- 
 pealed to the public, or to the politician, but 
 they have, none the less, increased their demands, 
 and obtained their demands. This is rather a 
 curious commentary upon organized labor. The 
 servant class numbers something like one in 
 forty of the total population. My only explana- 
 tion is that, as they are the class coming most 
 closely in contact with the ruling class, they have 
 absorbed and used the methods of that class. 
 They hold themselves at a high value, assert 
 that value, and wherever and whenever possible, 
 take all they can get. It is done quietly, as a mat- 
 ter of right, and with a sort of subdued air of sanc- 
 tity. This is the British way, an impressive and 
 an eminently successful way. At any rate, so 
 far as the servants themselves are concerned, 
 they may well laugh in their sleeves at the 
 troubles of the trades unions and other socie- 
 ties, which, with much noise, turmoil, strikes 
 and boycotts, have not succeeded as well as they 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 5 
 
 have in bettering their condition. The wages of 
 servants have increased out of all proportion to 
 the increase of wages in other occupations in the 
 last fifteen years. 
 
 Though I have written that they are unor- 
 ganized as a class, in the sense in which the min- 
 ers or the spinners are organized, they maintain 
 among themselves distinctions and gradations 
 as sharp as those of a Court. The house-keeper, 
 the butler, the head coachman, the master's 
 valet, and the mistress's maid, are the nobility 
 and gentry of the servants' hall, while footmen, 
 grooms, maids and the like are commoners. To 
 the average American these distinctions may be 
 merely laughable. Let him come to England 
 and keep house for a year and he will find them 
 adamant. He can no more ignore them or over- 
 ride them than he can alter the procedure in the 
 House of Lords. If he accepts them, well and 
 good ; if not, he will have no servants. The but- 
 ler and the house-keeper are spoken of by the 
 other servants as "Mr." Jones and "Mrs." 
 Brown, and the mistress's maid is "Miss," and 
 woe be to the unlucky underling who forgets 
 these prefixes! At a large house party where 
 there are many men servants and maids, they 
 take the precedence of their particular master 
 and mistress. You smile at first, and then you 
 
6 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 realize that underlying the snobbishness, the 
 petty dignities, is the national love of orderliness, 
 the desire for a cut-and-dried routine, the Brit- 
 ish contentment in having a fixed personal status. 
 Those who have read Thackeray's novels, and 
 his Yellowplush papers, have a not inaccurate, 
 though a brightly colored picture of the English 
 servant class. Above all things, do not forget 
 the most important factor of all, — they are all 
 English, they are all of the same race as their 
 masters. This explains, if not everything, almost 
 everything. 
 
 But, like all good Americans, let us be moving, 
 let us get on. Here we are at last in London! 
 That yellow ball above the horizon, seen through 
 this bituminous haze, is the sun — the sun sadly 
 tarnished. Those little toy coaches and engines, 
 are cars and locomotives. The noiseless gliding 
 out, and gliding into the station, is the English 
 way of running things. No shouting, no nervous 
 snapping of watches, no shriek of whistle, no 
 clanging of bell; a scarcely audible whistle, and 
 the thing is done. These people must know their 
 business or somebody would be left behind, 
 somebody would get into the wrong train; they 
 do know their business. We are soon to find 
 that this is the country of personal freedom, and 
 also personal responsibility. You may do as 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 7 
 
 you please unmolested, uncriticised, unreported, 
 unphotographed, unheralded, unnoticed even, 
 as in no other country in the world, but the mo- 
 ment you do what you ought not to please to do, 
 from the policeman to the court, and thence to 
 the jail, is a shorter road here than anywhere 
 else. So much personal liberty is only possible 
 where justice is swift, unprejudiced impartial 
 and sure. The lord, the millionaire, the drunk- 
 ard and the snatch thief are treated the same — 
 within the same six months a great financial 
 schemer and the son of a great nobleman were 
 ushered behind the bars with almost as little 
 ceremony and as little delay as are required 
 for the trial of a wife-beater or a burglar. Per- 
 sonal freedom has this serious responsibility: 
 its misuse is promptly punished, and there is 
 no escape, — they even behead a king on oc- 
 casion. 
 
 When we are in England we do, so far as our 
 temperamental limitations permit, as the English 
 do. We go to a private hotel, small, with a front 
 door always locked and only opened on demand, 
 and we are ushered into our own apartment. 
 For a week now, not another guest has revealed 
 himself. Meals are served to each in his own 
 rooms, and though there is a coffee-room, no 
 one, apparently, uses it. The Englishman brings 
 
8 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 his home to his hotel. It is not a meeting-place, 
 but, quite on the contrary, a place for personal 
 privacy and seclusion. There are, of course, 
 now in London, great caravansaries, but they 
 are for the stranger and for the modernized 
 Englishman, the real John Bull abhors them. 
 The rooms are damp, a small grate-fire miti- 
 gates the gloom of the sitting-room, but bed- 
 room and dressing-room retain their damp-blan- 
 ket atmosphere throughout our stay. A tin tub 
 is brought in in the morning and evening, and 
 you bathe as a protection from the cold. A 
 sound rubbing with a coarse towel takes the 
 place of a fire, or steam heat. No doubt many 
 people die in becoming accustomed to this 
 method of keeping warm, but those who survive 
 have conquered for themselves the greatest em- 
 pire extant. 
 
 The first days in the streets of London bring 
 so many impressions that it is as confusing to 
 remember them as to recall, in their proper order, 
 the changes of a kaleidoscope. It is apparent 
 that the men are heavier here than with us : ap- 
 parent, too, that this is a land of men, ruled by 
 men, obedient to the ways and comforts and 
 prejudices of men, not women. Here the male 
 bird has the brilliant plumage. The best of 
 them, as one sees them in Piccadilly, in Bond 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 9 
 
 Street, in St. James's Street, in the clubs, in the 
 park on a Sunday after church, are fine-look- 
 ing fellows, well set up and scrupulously well 
 groomed and turned out. But the women ! What 
 hats, what clothes, what shoes, what colors, what 
 amorphous figures ! One hears of English econo- 
 mies, evidently they begin with the dress-maker's 
 bill. Who permits that nice-looking girl to wear 
 a white fiannel skirt, a purple jacket, and a fur 
 hat with a bunch of small feathers sticking out of 
 it at right angles ? Here is another with an em- 
 broidered linen coat, and a bit of ermine fur, 
 and a straw hat with flowers on it! The gro- 
 tesque costumes of the women would make one 
 stop to stare, were it not that they are so common 
 one ceases at last to notice them. But their taste 
 in dress is nothing new. When Queen Victoria 
 came to the throne their tasteless vagaries of 
 costume were noticeable. A well-dressed lady is 
 described as wearing, in those days, **a blue 
 satin robe, a black-violet mantlet lined with blue 
 satin and trimmed with black lace, and an em- 
 erald-green hat, trimmed with blonde and roses, 
 as well as ribbon and feathers"! 
 
 The complexions of the English have often 
 been exploited for our benefit. The damp cli- 
 mate and the exercise out-of-doors produce the 
 red, they say. But on examination it proves to 
 
10 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 be not the red of the rose, but the red of raw 
 beef, and often streaky and fibrous at that. 
 The features are large and the faces high-col- 
 ored, but it is not a dehcate pink, it is a coarse 
 red. At a distance, the effect is charming, bright, 
 refreshing, but close to, often rather unpleasant. 
 Here the features of the women, even the feat- 
 ures of the beautiful women, are moulded ; while 
 the features of our beautiful American women 
 are chiselled. 
 
 The shops wear the colors, so to speak, of the 
 dominant sex. Those that most attract you 
 have in their windows the paraphernalia of the 
 male bird. Shops with guns, and folding seats 
 to carry about when shooting, and everything 
 pertaining to the sport in profusion; shops with 
 windows draped with haberdashery; shops filled 
 with leather and silver conveniences for men; 
 shops with all sorts of hats for all sorts of climates 
 for men's wear; shops with harness, shops with 
 whips, shops with saddles, shops with tobacco, 
 endless shops with potables of all kinds from 
 those vintages of '47, '64, '84, '99, and 1900, for 
 the particular imbiber, to those with the ever- 
 lasting "Bitter" and *'Gin," enjoyed by the no- 
 madic drinker with only pennies on his person 
 and no credit. Should you take the trouble to 
 count you would find that the purveyors to 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 11 
 
 masculine taste largely predominate. The men 
 dress, the women are clothed, and the shops are 
 provided accordingly. 
 
 The Englishwoman pretends that the French- 
 woman and the American woman are over- 
 dressed, inappropriately dressed. This, how- 
 ever, is only a salve to her feelings, and is acqui- 
 esced in by her lord for reasons of economy. In 
 the country, in stout boots, nondescript hats, 
 and cheap flannel and tweed, the Englishwoman 
 is properly clothed because such costumes are 
 cheap; but in town she is awkwardly clothed 
 because well-fitting clothes of fine material are 
 expensive, and the Englishwoman is not given 
 her appropriate share of the income for purposes 
 of personal adornment. That is the truth of the 
 matter, that and the national all-pervasive lack 
 of taste, which accounts for the odd, often comi- 
 cal appearance of women in London. 
 
 It might imperil the faith of the reader in 
 these impressions, were one to give facts in this 
 connection; if one, that is to say, were to give 
 the figures of amounts allowed to certain women, 
 wives, sisters, daughters, in certain families to 
 dress on. Just as our women are so often wick- 
 edly and grotesquely extravagant in their ex- 
 penditure, so, here, such matters are on a scale 
 that can only be called mean. Very often facts, 
 
12 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 statements from real life are flouted as isolated, 
 exaggerated and hence untrue to life. Often 
 enough, therefore, a general impression carries 
 more weight, and is, in truth, more valuable. 
 This is the case in this particular instance as in 
 many others. After an experience of England 
 and the English covering some thirty odd years, 
 I could easily quote example after example of 
 the pittances allowed Englishwomen for their 
 personal expenditure. Is it not, perhaps, easier 
 and surer, after all, to develop particular in- 
 stances from general lines of civilization ? This 
 England has become the great Empire she is 
 because she is a man's country; this fact at any 
 rate will protrude itself, make itself unmistak- 
 able at every turn as we go on, and the expendi- 
 tures permitted to the women are merely one of 
 the minor results of this. 
 
 To those who have given some attention to 
 gastronomies either for the stomach's or the 
 pocket's sake, the food provided here is almost 
 more than a first impression, it is a daily, thrice 
 daily, bugbear. Here, again, it is surely the 
 masculine stomach that dictates. Meat, meat, 
 meat, and no alleviation. The vegetables are 
 few, and even they, as Heine — how Heine must 
 have suffered in England — phrased it, "are 
 boiled in water, and then put upon the table just 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 13 
 
 as God made them!" It is true that one may 
 go to the expensive restaurants, the Ritz, the 
 Carlton, the Savoy and others, and live daintily 
 enough, but that is not England, that is a foreign 
 country with which we have nothing to do. 
 During the past two weeks, I have dined at our 
 own private hotel, — which, by the way, it is fair 
 to the student to say, is a first-rate one in the 
 fashionable West End district — at the country 
 house of a distinguished peer of the realm and 
 at a middle-class restaurant in the Strand. At 
 all of these meat predominated. At his lord- 
 ship's it is needless to say, there were fruits, and 
 salads, and vegetables from his own gardens, 
 and there was such variety that a guest might 
 please himself, and must have been over-critical 
 not to dine well whatever his tastes; but the 
 eternal round of eggs, bacon, sole, beef, mut- 
 ton, ham, tongue and chicken, with potatoes, 
 and cabbage, and cheese, is the familiar diet of 
 the Englishman. Nor does he complain. He 
 wants nothing else. He demands just this bill- 
 of-fare. I have heard at Julien's in Paris, where, 
 when Julien himself presides over your meal, 
 you dine completely, the Englishman sighing for 
 some good plain beef or mutton. He likes it, 
 it agrees with him, he sighs for it when he has 
 been separated from it, and those who survive 
 
14 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 this sanguinary flesh diet are, it must be ad- 
 mitted, splendid animals indeed. 
 
 "Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel. 
 Upon the strength of water gruel ? 
 But who can stand his raging force. 
 When first he rides then eats his horse!" 
 
 This damp, cool climate, where, as King 
 Charles said, one can be out-of-doors and enjoy 
 being out-of-doors more days in the year than in 
 any other country in the world, is a climate 
 where the warmly dressed, agreeably exercising, 
 comfortably housed male flourishes like a green 
 bay tree. Let it be borne in mind constantly 
 that these pages are not written in criticism — 
 that is poor business for any man, most of all for 
 a happy man who numbers many Englishmen 
 among his friends — but as a study. Who is 
 this Englishman ? what is he ? why is he ? where 
 and how does he live ? above all, why has he con- 
 quered the world ? how much longer will he be 
 supreme.? — those are the questions of interest. 
 We are noting facts not because they are pleas- 
 ant or unpleasant, not because they fit in with 
 some theory of our own, but because they are to 
 light the road we propose to travel among these 
 people. 
 
 It is this climate, seldom very hot, seldom very 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 15 
 
 cold, rarely very bright, which lends itself better 
 than any other to exercise out-of-doors, which 
 makes fuel of a bulky and beefy sort necessary. 
 No man in America, not even a coal heaver 
 could live the year round on the food and drink 
 which are the daily dietary of many men here; 
 mostly men, it is true, who spend much time 
 out-of-doors, shooting, fishing, hunting, golfing 
 and the like. Eggs and bacon and sole with tea 
 or coffee for breakfast. A hot dish of meat and 
 potatoes, vegetable marrow, cabbage, celery, all 
 boiled, or cold meat, salad and cheese, with beer 
 or whiskey and soda, and a glass of port to fol- 
 low for luncheon. Soup, generally very poor, 
 fish, meat, an entree, often of meat, a sweet, 
 cheese and fruit for dinner, with champagne, 
 whiskey and soda or a light wine according to 
 taste, again with port to follow, this bill-of-fare is 
 a fair average diet. Added to by the rich, sub- 
 tracted from by the poor, until it is the best of 
 good living at the table of a Rothschild, because 
 there is nothing so difficult in all the realm of 
 cookery as plain cooking; or the most awfully 
 unwholesome fodder at the table of the poor 
 man, because these elements that lend themselves 
 to the most wholesome diet, lend themselves also 
 to the most unwholesome. 
 
 Look at the people who swarm the streets to 
 
16 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 see the Lord Mayor's Show, and where will you 
 see a more pitiable sight. These beef-eating 
 port-drinking fellows in Piccadilly, exercised, 
 scrubbed, groomed, they are well enough to be 
 sure; but this other side of the shield is distress- 
 ing to look at. Poor, stunted, bad-complex- 
 ioned, shabbily dressed, ill-featured are these 
 pork-eating, gin-drinking denizens of the East 
 End. Crowds I have seen in America, in Mex- 
 ico, and in most of the great cities of Europe — 
 of India and China I know nothing. Nowhere 
 is there such squalor, such pinching poverty, so 
 many undersized, so many plainly and revolt- 
 ingly diseased, so much human rottenness as 
 here. This is what the climate, the food, and the 
 drink, and man's rule of the weaker to the wall, 
 accomplish for the weak. 
 
 "The good old rule, the ancient plan. 
 That he should take who has the power, 
 And he should keep who can." 
 
 But more of this at another time. It is one of 
 England's ugly problems and deserves a chap- 
 ter to itself. 
 
 What an orderly crowd it is! Call it by all 
 the bad names you will, and there remains this 
 characteristic of law-abidingness which has been 
 to me for many years, and is still, a ceaseless 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 17 
 
 source of wonder. See thera at the great race on 
 the Epsom Downs on Derby Day. As you look 
 from your coach top you see a black mass of 
 people. No sign of a track, no sign of a race. 
 A bell rings, two or three policemen on horse- 
 back, half a dozen more on foot, begin moving 
 along the track, and this enormous crowd melts 
 aside, makes a lane; the horses come out, dash 
 away, the race is run, and back the people 
 swarm again. The same at the Lord Mayor's 
 Show. A few ,policemen begin clearing the mid- 
 dle of Fleet Street — a narrow street at best. 
 Then mounted police, four abreast, not a word 
 said, scarcely a gesture; no clubs, no noise, a lane 
 is made through these people packed together, 
 without shoving, pushing, elbowing, cursing or 
 angry words, and here comes the procession. 
 I have walked these streets now, on and off, for 
 many years and at all hours of the day and night, 
 and I cannot remember being pushed, shoved, 
 shouldered, or elbowed. It is marvellous. So, 
 too, I have driven through these streets, one, two 
 and four horses, many and many a time, and 
 each time with renewed admiration, not only for 
 the admirable driving but for the good humor, 
 the give and take, the fair play, the intuitive and 
 universal willingness to give every fellow his 
 fair chance and his rights. If that crowd in the 
 
18 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 City is incomparably and uncompromisingly un- 
 pleasant to look at, it is none the less permeated 
 with the national gift for law and order and fair 
 play. 
 
 It is not a dull crowd. There are wags 
 amongst them, and much appreciation of their 
 humor. In this particular procession the vari- 
 ous King Edwards appeared in appropriate cos- 
 tume, and with attendants in the trappings of 
 their time. As Edward the Confessor appears 
 some one says: *"Ello Eddie, you don't seem to 
 'ave changed much!" and there is a roar of ap- 
 preciation at this chaff, and Eddie looks embar- 
 rassed enough in spite of his big horse, and his 
 magnificent followers. "Oh, Oi soi, 'is beard 
 and 'air don't match!" greets the appearance of 
 another Edward, and again the crowd laughs 
 good-naturedly. But for forty minutes, while 
 the procession passes, and for hours before and 
 hours after, this enormous crowd manages itself. 
 Indeed, it is to be doubted, whether, were there 
 no policemen in the streets, these people would 
 not of themselves have made way and given the 
 new Lord Mayor fair play and a clear passage. 
 
 There is one police patrolman to every 496 
 inhabitants of London ; one to every 547 in New 
 York; one to every 485 in Washington; one to 
 every 509 in Boston; one to every 449 in Liver- 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 19 
 
 pool; one to every 330 in Dublin; one to every 
 340 in Berlin; one to every 184 in St. Peters- 
 burg; one to every 175 in Lisbon. When one 
 considers the enormous area of London, and the 
 universally acknowledged success of their daily 
 dealings with crowds and with the traffic, and 
 the comparative comfort and safety of people in 
 this town, so large that it is almost a nation in 
 itself, one is driven to the conclusion that the 
 people themselves have the root of orderliness 
 and fair play in them. 
 
 How is it in quite another social sphere.'^ At 
 Newmarket in the members' stand, walking 
 from the stand to the paddock, I see a short, 
 heavily built man of sixty odd, with gray beard 
 and moustache, a fine aquiline nose, clear eyes, 
 a cigar in his mouth, dressed in a brown bowler 
 hat and a formless brown overcoat. It is the 
 King. The King of that crowd in Fleet Street. 
 The King of that crowd at Epsom. The King 
 of these quiet people here in the paddock at 
 Newmarket. No one stares, points, whispers, 
 no one even looks. He, too, is given fair play, 
 a chance with other English gentlemen to enjoy 
 himself. He does not meddle with them, they 
 do not meddle with him. If it is necessary to 
 have a row, as has happened when there was 
 undue meddling on either side, it is fought out 
 
20 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and settled. In the meantime, fair play, and 
 give every fellow a chance, from the King to the 
 coster-monger. As an American I take off my 
 hat. I should take off my hat to this King, any 
 way. He is the cheapest investment and the 
 most valuable asset England has to-day. When- 
 ever he has taken a part in national affairs it has 
 been for the glory, the peace and prosperity of 
 his country. When he meddles it is not to ad- 
 vertise himself, not for the humiliation and un- 
 doing of his country, but for her honor. 
 
 When one remembers that there is no written 
 constitution here, no infallible or inviolable body 
 of law, but that each emergency is met by com- 
 mon-sense and solved by the application of a 
 kind of working worldly wisdom, one admires 
 the more the calm way in which each, from the 
 highest to the lowest, submits, is satisfied, and 
 goes his way. The House of Lords is the high- 
 est court of appeal, and though nowadays law 
 lords are created who do the legal work of the 
 House of Lords, this was not always the case. 
 These hereditary rulers were supposed by in- 
 stinct, or divine grace, or what not, to be capable 
 of passing upon the most intricate legal questions. 
 One sees how they have been trained for centu- 
 ries to meet and settle disputes, big and little, 
 between themselves as Englishmen, and between 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 21 
 
 themselves as a nation, and other nations, along 
 these same lines. 
 
 Sitting on the bench at Bow Street with the 
 Magistrate, I listened all one morning to his 
 disposal of the cases that came before him. It 
 seemed to me when I left that I had known be- 
 forehand what would happen. Quarrelsome 
 women and men, mostly through drink; men 
 and children accused of begging; a few cases of 
 assault or resistance to the constable; all of 
 them, hour after hour, dealt with in a good-tem- 
 pered paternal sort of way, with appeals to their 
 own sense of what was right. Only the cases 
 where there had been resistance to the constable, 
 the constable who represents British law and 
 order, then hard labor and wholesome punish- 
 ment. Always the same from the King to Bow 
 Street. How can we live together amicably, 
 with the utmost freedom for each one ? that is the 
 problem. The practical result is — you see it if 
 you have eyes everywhere you go — a success. 
 The machinery that brings it about seems from 
 a theoretical point of view ill adapted to its pur- 
 pose, but somehow there is a quality in the peo- 
 ple themselves that permits a working basis. 
 
 I have never forgotten an almost grotesque 
 example of this method of depending upon the 
 people themselves to take care of themselves 
 
22 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and to play fair. It was at a cricket match. My 
 daughter and I walked round to the entrance to 
 the reserved seats stand. I asked for two seats. 
 "Where would you like them, sir.^" asked the 
 attendant. He saw that I hesitated, and said, 
 " Go in and see where you would like to sit, come 
 back and tell me the numbers of the seats you 
 have chosen, and I will give them to you!" 
 I accordingly went in and chose my seats and 
 walked back and received and paid for my tick- 
 ets. This was an important cricket match. 
 There were some thirty or forty people behind 
 me waiting to buy tickets, there were perhaps 
 half a dozen inside choosing their seats, and the 
 attendant was calmly running over his book of 
 tickets, pulling out the numbers called for by 
 those, myself among the number, who had 
 found the numbers of the seats they wanted. 
 There was no excitement or haste on the part 
 of anybody; nobody grumbled, nobody seemed 
 dissatisfied with this ridiculously slow and cum- 
 bersome machinery. On the contrary, because 
 it did work with these law-abiding people every- 
 body was the better off. This incident remains 
 fixed in my memory as unique. Imagine a 
 crowd at a race-course in France treated in this 
 way. Picture the preposterousness of treating 
 an American crowd at a base-ball game in this 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 23 
 
 way. In either case there would be pushing and 
 crowding, bad language and appeals to Heaven 
 or to other lower powers to blast and destroy 
 a management which sanctioned such methods. 
 There is much talk and writing these days of 
 the danger to this Empire from Germany and 
 other powers. Much is written of English de- 
 cadence along certain lines. I expect to show in 
 other pages that there are legitimate reasons for 
 such statements, but if I were their enemy I 
 should always be cautious in attacking the Eng- 
 lish for that one reason, if for no other. They 
 know how to take care of themselves as do no 
 other people; and they seem to muddle along 
 with the old stage-coach methods about as fast 
 as do others with the latest thing in locomotive 
 engines. 
 
 I have watched for hours at a time the crowds 
 which came by the hundred thousand to support 
 or to protest against the Licensing Bill — the 
 imperturbable policeman, the docility of the 
 people, the coming and going through the streets, 
 the assembling in Hyde Park, all with a smooth- 
 ness and lack of trouble of a trained army. 
 Coming from Mars — or from Paris, the specta- 
 tor would say: these people have been trained 
 for months to march in procession, to assemble, 
 to disperse, to re-assemble and depart. But they 
 
24 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 have not been so trained. It is the outstanding 
 characteristic of the race. No wonder the average 
 Englishman cannot be terrified, or even aroused, 
 to take decent precautions against invasion. 
 They do not need the training of other peoples. 
 They are already trained. When I see this qual- 
 ity of the race I smile to think what would become 
 of a hundred or two hundred thousand Germans 
 landed on these shores, with their machine-like 
 methods, their lack of initiative, and their de- 
 pendence upon a bureaucracy. They would be 
 swallowed up, or dispersed like chaff. These 
 Saxons would dispose of them as they disposed 
 of the Danes. The old street song of the Jingo 
 days was not mere bluster. It had the heart of 
 the philosophy of the race in it: 
 
 " We don't want to fight 
 But, by Jingo, if we do," 
 
 etc., etc. This is true. They are not quarrel- 
 some, not oversensitive, not inclined to carry 
 chips on their shoulders, or to call attention to 
 the length of their coat tails as offering an oppor- 
 tunity to any who dare to tread upon them, but 
 they are a nasty lot to deal with once the row is 
 on. Perhaps it is because they realize, as Hobbes 
 has said, that the people do not flourish in a 
 monarchy because one man has a right to rule 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 25 
 
 them, but because they obey him; or perhaps it 
 is because they are not a mixed race, but of that 
 at another time. 
 
 The newspapers, being the eyes and ears of 
 the nation, are apparently unduly impressed by 
 disorderliness in other countries, particularly in 
 America. Each morning and evening the Amer- 
 ican news consists largely of the chronicling of 
 murders, railway disasters, divorces, fires, strikes, 
 suicides, trials in the law courts, and the like. 
 No doubt there are still people in provincial 
 English towns who look upon the American as 
 half horse, half alligator, with a dash of earth- 
 quake. But in the last two weeks in England, 
 I note a bad railway accident, eighteen killed 
 and injured; a disaster in a mine, seven men 
 killed; two women kidnapped right here in 
 London; three murders in broad daylight; 
 a noble lord killed in the hunting field; a noble 
 lord throws himself out of a window and kills 
 himself; another noble lord appears as co- 
 respondent in the divorce court, and is found 
 guilty; fog so dense one evening that there are 
 several accidents to the traffic; a distinguished 
 naval officer signals a humorous but none the less 
 discourteous message to one of his ships which 
 brings down upon him a severe reprimand from 
 the admiral of the fleet, and so on, and so on. 
 
26 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 I note these merely to reassure myself. Evi- 
 dently things go wrong here sometimes as else- 
 where in the world, but less is made of them. 
 The newspapers pass over these incidents lightly, 
 and with little comment. They are not even a 
 nine days' wonder as with us. The profound 
 sense of personal freedom, and the jealousy with 
 which it is guarded and protected, does not per- 
 mit the interference of newspaper reporters in 
 private affairs. Hence these matters cannot be 
 exploited, and dramatized, in epigrammatic par- 
 agraphs. There are fewer journals dedicated to 
 the putrid of the upper circles, wherein, as Mere- 
 dith says, "initials raise sewer lamps, and As- 
 modeus lifts a roof, leering hideously." There 
 would be too much horse- whipping here to make 
 blackmail journalism profitable. There is, too, 
 among the best people, an almost morbid dislike 
 of publicity. This is due to the fact that, for cen- 
 turies, only mountebanks, quacks, people with 
 something to sell, public mummers, and the 
 like, advertised themselves, or for that matter, 
 do so now. Most of the advertising of people 
 in America, putting their photographs in the 
 papers and the like, is bought and paid for in 
 more or less roundabout ways, by the people 
 themselves. So I am told by journalists who 
 ought to know. We deem it necessary to be 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 27 
 
 known, to keep ourselves before the public; the 
 men think it good business and pay for it as for 
 any other advertising ; the women from Eve-old 
 vanity think the same, and we are only just be- 
 ginning to realize that this is letting Asmodeus 
 in at the front door. 
 
 But this ample protection of each one in his 
 personal liberty of action and speech has its 
 dark side. Where a sense of propriety on the 
 one hand, and the punishment, ready to hand, 
 of social ostracism on the other, prevail, things 
 go well enough. There are, however, millions 
 who care nothing for propriety, and who already 
 have no social status, and consequently the 
 traffic in women and drink goes on in London 
 in an unblushing, embarrassing, and revolting 
 manner. Only here in London does one see, or 
 rather is it held under your nose, the most shame- 
 less parading of harlotry. The streets of the 
 West End after dusk, and some of the restau- 
 rants at supper time, are simply overrun with 
 hawkers of their own daubed but tarnished 
 charms. New York, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, 
 Berlin, City of Mexico, I know them all. In 
 them all vice is more or less secluded, abashed, 
 kept to one side by the police, not so here. It 
 may parade itself, walk the streets, flaunt itself, 
 to receive the same protection as any other 
 
28 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 pedestrian. So, too, may one drink — men, wo- 
 men, and even children — at almost every corner. 
 What the rich man does, the poor man may 
 do as well ; what the virtuous woman does, the 
 strumpet may do, too, so long as the law is not 
 violated. Protection for all alike, liberty for all 
 alike, and, be it said, punishment and the cold 
 neutrality of impartial justice, for all alike. 
 
 In this damp, chill climate, in these gloomy 
 streets, the poor and the vicious seem more 
 sodden and more brutal, and vice more unappe- 
 tizing than elsewhere. The gloom and ponder- 
 ousness of this huge grimy city of London are 
 reflected in the faces and the manners of the 
 submerged and semi-submerged part of the 
 population. One gets here, more than elsewhere, 
 an early and indelible impression of the fearful 
 struggle to survive. It would seem that one must 
 be more fit here to keep out the damp and the 
 cold, to eat the heavy food, to struggle against, 
 and to keep oneself against, the huge mass of 
 people centred here. The very bulk of the place 
 looms the larger, and is the more terrifying be- 
 cause it is so much of the time in semi-darkness ; 
 and to the weak and unarmed it must appeal as 
 a great crushing, dark, amorphous monster. 
 
 Nor am I altogether wrong in supposing that 
 these people merely look weak and uncared for. 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 29 
 
 They are, as a matter of fact, of anything but a 
 robust type. Yet the following table, covering 
 the twelvemonth ended September 30, 1907, gives 
 us a commentary upon the physical condition of 
 the men offering themselves as recruits for the 
 regular army : 
 
 OFFERED 
 TOWN FOR EN- 
 
 LISTMENT 
 
 REJECTED 
 
 FOR 
 PHYSICAL 
 REASONS 
 
 London 20,975 8,806 
 
 Birmingham 1,858 1,084 
 
 Manchester 2,523 1,821 
 
 Sheffield 1,031 363 
 
 Leeds . 791 452 
 
 Newcastle 1,493 1,046 
 
 Sunderland 776 282 
 
 Glasgow 2,905 1,135 
 
 Dundee 956 680 
 
 Edinburgh 1,500 628 
 
 These men were young men, and men with 
 a taste for outdoor life. Nor is the standard it- 
 self very high which they are called upon to pass. 
 
 On the other hand, those who survive, those 
 who are well armed and in control, are the more 
 confident and proud. Those who are in the 
 saddle in England ride a very fine horse, there 
 is no doubt of that. England and the English 
 have been dominant in the affairs of men for just 
 about a century, or since the Napoleonic wars. 
 It is hardly to be expected that having been so 
 long dominant they should not be domineering. 
 
30 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 This expresses itself in the best Englishmen by 
 an easy and natural attitude of confidence and 
 repose; but in the second and third rate Eng- 
 lishman, by an attitude of provincial bumptious- 
 ness and impudence unequalled in the world. 
 This is what has made the Englishman the most 
 unpopular, one may say, the most generally dis- 
 liked, of men. The Germans and the Irish hate 
 him; the French ridicule and distrust him; the 
 average American takes his awkwardness, or 
 what Carlyle once called "his pot-bellied equa- 
 nimity," for patronage, giving him little credit for 
 what is often mere shyness, and is forever irritated 
 by him, now that he is too big to be bothered by 
 him as a bully. His power, his stability, his hon- 
 esty have won him allies and make allies for him 
 to-day, but he has no friends. It would be a sad 
 day for the Lion if he lost his teeth and claws. 
 The real attitude of other nations toward him 
 would surprise him. It is hard to be dominant 
 and not to be domineering, and only the very 
 first-rate Englishmen escape the temptation; 
 and here, as everywhere else, the first-rate are in 
 a large minority. It is the mass of men who 
 make the composite photograph's main linea- 
 ments for the English nation's likeness, as must 
 be the case with other peoples. And the mass 
 of English people do not make themselves agree- 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 31 
 
 able to other people; oftener than not they seem 
 to pride themselves upon a studied erinaceous 
 attitude toward all the world. The result of 
 such behavior needs no chronicling by me. It 
 is evident enough. It is noted here as an im- 
 pression, deserving a place amongst first im- 
 pressions, because it is accountable for much 
 that is to follow. 
 
 It is fair, however, to add in this connection, 
 that there are two reasons for this fish-like social 
 attitude of the Englishman. In the first place, 
 his nerves are not on the surface, as with us, and 
 as is the case with all the Latin races. He is not 
 intentionally, but constitutionally, stolid. His 
 food and his climate have much to do with this. 
 He is not effusive, not sympathetic, because he 
 is not made that way. Here the mind frets not 
 the body. He is not easily disturbed or moved. 
 This is not a pose, it is a fact. He does not 
 shrink from display or warmth of manner, so 
 much as that they are lacking in his composition. 
 I dined on one occasion with a party of gentle- 
 men met to say good-by to a friend of all of 
 them, who was off for a long journey in the 
 East. His health was drunk, each one shook 
 him by the hand, and wished him a pleasant 
 journey; they were not to see him foi a year or 
 two, but had I not known, I should not have 
 
32 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 guessed that he was leaving these dozen friends 
 for a long absence. Doubtless his friends were 
 as hearty in their good wishes and as loath to 
 lose him as other men in other climes would 
 have been, .but there was little evidence of it. 
 That is their way. 
 
 Another reason for the seeming lack of spon- 
 taneity in their manner is their grounded horror 
 of interfering in other people's business. This 
 is carried to a point almost beyond belief. Men 
 who have belonged to the same club for years 
 know nothing of one another's private affairs. 
 
 "I didn't know he was married!" said a friend 
 to me one night at dinner, of a common friend, 
 whom we had both known for years. A man's 
 intimate friends for years, men he has known at 
 school, at the club, in the army, are often quite 
 unknown to, or by, his wife. Not that any man, 
 anywhere, cares to introduce all his acquaint- 
 ances into his home; but here the arrangement 
 of a man's life, quite apart from his home-life, is 
 often carried to an extreme. 
 
 They avoid the smallest suspicion of even 
 curiosity about one another's affairs or private 
 concerns. It is considered a monstrous indis- 
 cretion even to show any interest in the affairs of 
 a man who has not first invited you to an inter- 
 est therein. The result is a delightful freedom 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 33 
 
 from prying, or questioning, but at the same 
 time there is, in consequence, an entire lack of 
 ease and vivacity. It is necessarily only the bare 
 surface of things that one may touch upon, 
 where each one is wrapping himself in a mantle 
 of mental aloofness. Hence the English are 
 much given to the axiomata media in conversa- 
 tion, and much given to talking not at all when 
 they do not feel like it. They feel under no obli- 
 gation to be entertainers or entertaining. 
 
 England, as a whole, has little patience with 
 the virtues not easily recognized by the com- 
 munity as a whole. Originality is neither sought 
 nor commended. The man who expresses and 
 represents the community is the valued man. 
 The Mills and Spencers, and Merediths and 
 Bagehots, of whom the great mass of the Eng- 
 lish even now know nothing and care less, the 
 Byrons and Shelley s, they willingly let die. Eng- 
 land treats her men of wayward genius as a hen 
 treats the unexpectedly hatched duckling. She 
 is amazed to find herself responsible for an ani- 
 mal which prefers the water to the land; but once 
 it actually takes to the water, her responsibility 
 ceases. If the hen were English, and could talk, 
 it would say: "Well, that fellow is an awful ass, 
 and too clever by half!" When, therefore, they 
 come in contact with French, Germans, Ameri- 
 
34 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 cans, Italians, Irish, or even their own breed from 
 Canada or Australia, they have nothing to say to 
 them, no sympathy with them, no comprehension 
 of them, and not the least wish in the world to 
 understand them, unless there is something tan- 
 gible, and valuable to be got out of it. 
 
 If I have heard it once from my compatriots 
 I have heard it an hundred times, this dissatis- 
 faction and even irritation at the Englishman's 
 indifference. The American cannot understand 
 that this chilliness is not in the least assumed. 
 It is just as much a part of the Englishman as 
 his speech. He does not care for strangers, par- 
 ticularly foreigners, and he very seldom pretends 
 to. Our enthusiastic and indiscriminating hos- 
 pitality to foreigners, especially to Englishmen 
 and Englishwomen, is simply looked upon by 
 them as an acknowledgment of their superiority. 
 Some day we shall realize this, and become more 
 careful, but it is wonderful that an intelligent 
 race like the Americans should take the cuffing 
 and snubbing they get for their pains, whether at 
 home or as Americans domiciled in England, not 
 even now realizing that the Englishmen care noth- 
 ing about them unless they come bearing gifts. 
 But there is no hypocrisy about it. The Eng- 
 lishman does not treat foreigners that way, and 
 he does not in the least understand why we do so. 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS 35 
 
 There is never an international boat-race or 
 affair of any kind but what there are heart- 
 burnings on the part of the Americans; while 
 the Englishman, who has been hospitable in his 
 fashion, remains serenely unconscious that he 
 has not done all that was expected of him. He 
 simply does not understand our enthusiastic 
 hospitality — and, be it said, if he is a "bounder," 
 laughs at us for it behind our backs — and 
 would not dream of practising it if he did. In 
 the case of the Englishman it is not a theory, it is 
 a condition of mind and body, a heritage of social 
 training, for which he is in no sense to be blamed. 
 If we do not like it, we can leave it alone, but it is 
 absurd to be irritated. Americans who have be- 
 come domiciled in England, who give lavishly 
 to charities, who entertain luxuriously, would be 
 surprised to know the attitude of mind of the 
 average Englishman in regard to them. He 
 looks upon them first as people who have recog- 
 nized his superiority and therefore prefer his so- 
 ciety; but secondly, and always, as renegades, as 
 people who have shirked their duty as Ameri- 
 cans. This is typical of the Englishman's make- 
 up; he is complacently sure of himself, he is 
 condescendingly generous in the acceptance of 
 all forms of sport, amusement, and hospitality 
 offered by his American host, but he believes 
 
36 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 religiously in doing one's duty, and he knows 
 very well that runaways cannot be doing their 
 duty, even if it take the form of providing en- 
 tertainment for his adopted countrymen. I 
 should be sorry in closing this chapter if I have 
 not made it clear that I am offering explanations 
 not criticisms. Few criticisms, and no superficial 
 criticisms, are of the least value ; while, perhaps, 
 an explanation, especially if it is by way of being 
 a discovery, may soothe, even if it does not en- 
 tirely satisfy. Nor should the last word on this 
 particular subject go without the personal testi- 
 mony of the writer, which, no doubt, is shared 
 by many others, that there is no kindlier, no more 
 hospitable and no pleasanter comrade than the 
 Englishman, once one is upon a footing of inti- 
 macy with him. Then he accepts you just as 
 naturally as he does not accept the stranger. 
 
II 
 
 WHO ARE THE ENGLISH ? 
 
 IF this question : Who are the English ? were 
 asked, either of the average Englishman, or 
 of the average American visitor to England, 
 the answer would probably be both inaccurate 
 and confusing. The average Englishman knows 
 little of the origins of his race, and is not of the 
 mental make-up that sets much store by such 
 matters in any case; and the American pays 
 little heed to anything except to what comes di- 
 rectly under his notice as he travels about . to 
 and from London as his centre. 
 
 London itself is a city of some four million 
 six hundred odd thousand inhabitants. It is 
 a small nation in itself. The total population of 
 the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is 
 only 43,660,000 (1906). But London is not 
 England. The United Kingdom of Great Brit- 
 ain and Ireland is not England, with its total 
 area of 121,000 square miles. No, what the 
 world knows as England is the British Empire, 
 
 37 
 
38 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 which includes the above, and, in addition, some 
 11,400,000 square miles, and a population of 
 about 410,000,000. The known surface of the 
 globe is estimated at about 55,000,000 square 
 miles — its total population is believed to be 
 v/ about 1,800,000,000. The British Empire, there- 
 fore, occupies more than one-fifth of the earth's 
 surface, and its population is also more than 
 one-fifth, or about twenty-two per cent, of the 
 inhabitants of the globe. 
 
 That is England! In Asia they have a popu- 
 lation of some 237,000,000; in Africa, a popu- 
 lation of some 31,000,000; in America, a popu- 
 lation of some 60,000,000; in the West Indies, 
 some 2,000,000; in Australasia, some 5,500,000, 
 and so on. When you walk the streets of Lon- 
 don, therefore, you are in the capital of some- 
 ^ thing over one-fifth of the world. These gentle- 
 men in clubs, and offices, and in the streets, 
 are the masters of the world. There must be a 
 great many of them, and they must be very 
 wonderful men, one says to oneself. No, the 
 population of Great Britain and Ireland is, as 
 we have seen, only about 43,500,000, and what 
 of them ? 
 
 It is stated on trustworthy authority that the 
 aggregate income of these 43,000,000 of people 
 is $8,550,000,000. Of this total, 1,250,000 pec- 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 39 
 
 pie have $2,925,000,000, these are the rich; 
 3,750,000 people have $1,225,000,000, these are 
 the comfortable class; the other 38,000,000 
 have $4,400,000,000, to divide, and if we do 
 the dividing for them, we see that these 38,000,- 
 000 have nearly one hundred and sixteen dollars 
 apiece. Not a large income by any means. 
 But we are not Socialists, these figures are not 
 put down here to bolster any argument for or 
 against the distribution of wealth, but to call 
 attention to quite another matter. It is evident 
 from these figures that we may deduct 38,000,- 
 
 000 from the 43,000,000 of population and still 
 have in the 5,000,000 that remain the sum total 
 of those who do the real governing, the real rul- 
 ing, of this enormous Empire. The other 38,- 
 000,000, with their average income of $116, 
 have in all probability neither leisure nor ability 
 to look after anybody but themselves, and they 
 even do that precariously. We may go still fur- 
 ther, and say that out of these 5,000,000 cer- 
 tainly not more than 1,000,000 are male adults. 
 
 1 know very well the admirable phrase of Walter 
 Bagehot that "there are lies, damned lies, and 
 statistics" ; but I may claim for this analysis that 
 it is a matter of facts, and not of statistics. It 
 requires no juggling with figures, no poetic ex- 
 aggeration for the petty purpose of making a 
 
 v/ 
 
40 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 point, to arrive at this rather startHng conclu- 
 sion: that about 1,000,000 Englishmen of the 
 ruling class control one-fifth of the known sur- 
 face of the globe, and one in every five of all 
 the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 Out of the various wars and invasions of the 
 island of Great Britain, from the time of Caesar's 
 first landing in 55 B.C., there has percolated down 
 a million men who rule the world. 
 
 This is sufficiently interesting to make it 
 worth while to find out who these Englishmen 
 are. We can, any and all of us, make our notes 
 about them as we see them, here and now. 
 According as our eyes differ, our tastes differ, 
 our education and experience differ, we come to 
 different conclusions. Personally, I am inclined 
 to think that the Englishman is an acquired taste, 
 but for the moment that is neither here nor there. 
 When any comparatively small number of men 
 come to play such a role as this in the world, one 
 must begin further back to study them. This is 
 not a sociological or psychological freak, this 
 maintenance of superiority over the world — 
 not a matter that can be explained by snippity 
 chapters written at short range about the Eng- 
 lishman's religion, his Parliament, his clubs, his 
 home life, his sports, his clothes, and so on, in- 
 definitely. These are merely the outside trap- 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 41 
 
 pings, which are interesting enough in their way 
 and well worthy of the reporter and his camera, 
 because there are plenty of people about who 
 only want to know what the great man looks 
 like, and what he smokes, and what he drinks, 
 and whether he wears a turned-down collar or 
 not — and some of them, perchance, will make 
 themselves great in his likeness by copying his 
 wardrobe, his diet, and his potables. 
 
 But we are so superficial as to believe that in 
 these two thousand years, since Caesar's day, 
 there must be, here and there, interesting and 
 important documents dealing with the origins, 
 the ancestry, the lineage, and training of this 
 superb band of a million men who hold the 
 world in their hands. 
 
 We know the misty moist island in which they 
 have lived all this time. We know that even 
 Tacitus wrote that its climate was repulsive be- 
 cause of its rains and continual mists. Caesar 
 and his Romans did not go there for a holiday 
 on account of the charms of the climate. No 
 Roman, of those days, or these, would choose 
 this island as a place of residence. The Roman 
 invasion was merely to control the resident 
 Britons, and to prevent their sending aid to the 
 Gauls who were fighting Rome. The Romans 
 stayed there for three hundred and fifty years. 
 
42 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 They built two great walls across the land to 
 check the invasions of the Britons; they built 
 roads for the passage of the legions; they con- 
 structed intrenched camps, which are the origin 
 of many of the names of places ending in cester, 
 or Chester, from the Latin word castrum, and 
 when the legions were called away in 408 a.d. 
 to check the invasion of the Barbarians on the 
 Continent, they left the island as British as it 
 was before, with no trace of their language, their 
 customs, or their laws. Though both English 
 and American jurisprudence is based upon Ro- 
 man law, this came later. England is not, there- 
 fore, in any sense Roman. 
 
 These Britons of Caesar's time were a mixed 
 race of Iberian stock — Iberian meaning of 
 south-western Europe — at the present time the 
 Basque is the last and best representative. But 
 as there is no Roman, so there is no Briton, or 
 very little, in the English ancestry. From north- 
 western Germany came Saxons, Engles and 
 Jutes who, from time to time, invaded the Eng- 
 land of the Briton, and finally crowded him out. 
 By 829 the Germanic tribes had poured in, and 
 completely invested England, or what we now 
 know as England. But of these tribes the one 
 that really made the England of to-day, the one 
 from which England, and the English, get their 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 43 
 
 chief characteristics, was the tribe of the Saxons. 
 Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, the familiar names of 
 English counties, are nothing more nor less 
 than South Saxony, East Saxony and Middle 
 Saxony. They were not of the marauding or 
 piratical type. They came in the first instance 
 as companions of their neighbors the Jutes. 
 But while the Jutes came for adventure and for 
 booty, the Saxons came because they wanted 
 land to settle on. They came because their own 
 country was becoming overcrowded. They were 
 an agricultural people of the peasant class. 
 There was no trace of feudalism amongst them. 
 They were landowners with equal rights, who 
 gradually pushed their way over the land, taking 
 more and more territory; beating back the Brit- 
 ons, and securely occupying the territory they 
 had won. The conquered Britons finally fled 
 to the Welsh mountains where some of them re- 
 mained, while others passed over in large num- 
 bers to the other side of the Channel to Armorica, 
 and the Brittany of to-day is the land of this 
 body of exiles from England. 
 
 These Saxons were independent farmers; 
 they acknowledged no chief, no king, and when 
 they were called upon to fight together, they an- 
 swered the call of the leader or answered it not 
 as they chose. When King Alfred called upon 
 
44 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 them the first time to join him in driving out the 
 Danes, they refused to aid him. Finally they 
 came to his aid, but at a time of their own choos- 
 ing. When they came together to discuss ques- 
 tions of common and general interest, their 
 meeting or assembly was not one of subjects, or 
 followers, but of freemen. They had apparently 
 little taste for public meetings, and those of 
 them who were much occupied with their own 
 estates and their own affairs, got into the way of 
 staying away altogether. Those who had leisure, 
 or talent for such matters, went. Finally what 
 was then known as the Witenagemot, or the 
 Meeting of Wise Men, and what has since be- 
 come the English Parliament, took over the set- 
 tlement of these questions, and left the farmers 
 free to attend to their own affairs. Even in 
 matters of justice and punishment each group 
 appointed one of their number richer or more 
 expert in such matters to choose juries and to 
 preside over such cases. Finally the sovereign 
 got into the habit of naming such persons, al- 
 ready marked out as fit for such duties by their 
 neighbors, as magistrates, and in this, as we 
 should call it, free and easy fashion, the business 
 of government was carried on. You may go to 
 the Bow Street Police Court and see the busi- 
 ness of the day carried on in much the same 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 45 
 
 fashion now. The magistrate is a wise gentle- 
 man dealing with the problems of his less fortu- 
 nate neighbors. That is all. They were people 
 with little aptitude for public affairs, and with a 
 rooted distaste for overmuch government, and 
 so law-abiding, and naturally industrious and 
 peaceable, that they needed and need less ma- 
 chinery of government than other peoples. They 
 wanted independence on their own estates, and 
 they wanted not to be meddled with. 
 
 It is not my intention to provide origins for 
 the English people in order to trace later, and 
 thus easily from my own hypothesis, the devel- 
 opment of their present characteristics. 
 
 "They are the finest of all the German tribes, 
 and strive more than the rest to found their 
 greatness upon equity." "A passionless, firm 
 and quiet people, they live a solitary life, and do 
 not stir up wars or harass the country by plunder 
 and theft." "And yet they are always ready to 
 a man to take up arms and even to form an army 
 if the case demands it." Thus writes Tacitus of 
 them. 
 
 This tribe of Saxons had, by accident or wise 
 leadership, happened upon the very country 
 best suited to them. A fertile island, cut off 
 from the rest of the world, and with room for 
 all so that each one might with his family have 
 
46 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 a kingdom of his own. This with as Httle ma- 
 chinery of government as possible, and yet all 
 ready to combine as equals in self-defence. But 
 as they made their land productive, as they be- 
 came rich, they became the prey of other peoples 
 from north-western Germany, and what is now 
 the Scandinavian peninsula, and were forced to 
 defend their possessions and their customs 
 against Angles, Danes, and Normans. 
 
 It is a curious feature of the abiding, unre- 
 lenting purpose of these Saxons to govern them- 
 selves, and to be let alone, that though they were 
 conquered in turn by Angles, Danes and Nor- 
 mans, they swallowed up all three in the end, 
 and imposed their customs, their language, their 
 habit of mind, and their institutions upon each 
 of the invaders in turn. They would have noth- 
 ing to do with the half-developed feudalism of 
 Angles and Danes, or with the fully developed 
 feudalism of William the Conqueror and his fol- 
 lowers. The Conqueror claimed that the land 
 was his and that every holder of land owed 
 fealty to him personally. It took just about an 
 hundred years for the Saxon idea to prevail over 
 this feudalistic notion, and the result was Magna 
 Charta. The Magna Charta, wrested from 
 King John by the Norman barons, was in reality 
 the shaking off of personal allegiance to a chief- 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 47 
 
 tain by the Norman barons, aided by the Saxon 
 gentry, who had finally imbued them also with 
 their own love of independence and a free gov- 
 ernment. They insisted then, and have main- 
 tained ever since, that they derived their rights, 
 their liberties, and their laws, not from a king, 
 but from themselves. In the days of William 
 the Conqueror their king was elective, though 
 chosen from the reigning house. As late as 1689 
 the Commons voted that King James had abdi- 
 cated and that the throne was vacant! They 
 chose their own rulers, and no doubt would do 
 so again to-day if necessary. It is much too long 
 a story to go, step by step, through the recital of 
 this development. It concerns us here only to 
 note these unchanging characteristics of the 
 race, maintained and strengthened through cen- 
 turies of war, tumult, and conquest. 
 
 The present House of Lords itself is the direct 
 result of the Saxon's unwillingness to bother 
 with government, and his willingness to leave 
 such matters to those of most leisure and most 
 wealth, and therefore, in all probability, to those 
 of most capacity and most experience in such 
 matters. It was, and is, the common-sense view 
 of government, as over against the theoretical 
 view. The danger in such a view of govern- 
 ment, of course, lies in the fact that the govern- 
 
48 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ors, whether kings, or nobles, or statesmen, may 
 grow to feel themselves paramount, and under- 
 take to demand from the governed what they 
 have no right to demand ; such as taxation with- 
 out representation, or a full purse for the king 
 by unjust requirements, and without rendering 
 an account. But these peaceable Saxons, on 
 each and every occasion when their independ- 
 ence has been threatened, have risen in a mass, 
 asserted their liberties, and then left their kings 
 or gentry again to govern. The Magna Charta, 
 and the revolt led by Simon de Montfort, and 
 the head of Charles the First, are all warnings to 
 whom it may concern that the Saxons are not to 
 be meddled with, and are not to be anybody's 
 subjects. Thus began the history, and the fact, 
 of democratic government. Love of the land, 
 industry, privacy, personal liberty; these were 
 sought and found in this island by the Saxons, 
 and they have been preserved there ever since. 
 
 The London policeman with his hand up- 
 lifted, who has become part and parcel of the 
 rhetorical stock in trade of American ambassa- 
 dors, is the symbol of the Saxon's willingness to 
 abide by the law, so long as the law is of his own 
 making, and facilitates his getting about his 
 business quickly and with a modicum of friction. 
 That policeman is simply the embodiment of the 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 49 
 
 spirit of the race which has fought off Jutes, 
 Angles, Danes and Normans; which has broken 
 nobles, and beheaded kings in order to be let 
 alone to attend to their own affairs in their own 
 way. They are not jealous of the law as are the 
 French, because they make the law for their own 
 convenience, and because they know that it ap- 
 plies with equal force to all. They do not dis- 
 regard the law as do we Americans who are 
 overrun with amateur law-makers, because they 
 realize that they can and do make the laws, and 
 that to disregard rules of their own making makes 
 either sport or government a nuisance. The 
 coster-monger's cart and the coroneted carriage 
 in London streets have equal privileges, no more, 
 no less, the one than the other. You may see 
 both dealt with, with imperturbable impartiality 
 by the police any day in the streets. The poi- 
 sonous philosophy of socialism, whether it be 
 eleemosynary socialism, or predatory socialism, 
 which would make the State a distributor of the 
 surplus of the strong for the propagation of the 
 weak, makes its way but slowly among those of 
 Saxon blood. "If I were to be asked," says 
 Montesquieu, "what is the predilection of the 
 English, I should find it very hard to say: not 
 war, nor birth, nor honors, nor success in love, 
 nor the charms of ministerial favor. They want 
 
50 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 men to be men. They value only two things — 
 wealth and worth." 
 
 No State can make men men. No State can 
 produce wealth and worth. These three — men, 
 and wealth, and worth — are produced, and 
 produced only, where men measure themselves 
 against men for the mastery over the fruits of 
 the earth, without adventitious aids of any kind, 
 and under the protection of laws that all make 
 and all obey. 
 
 In these modern days, when so many strive to 
 become members of Parliament, and when all 
 sorts of pressure, financial and otherwise, is 
 brought to bear to secure a peerage, it is inter- 
 esting to remember that both the House of 
 Lords and the House of Commons owe their ex- 
 istence to the fact that the Saxons did not wish 
 to be bothered by attendance at their assemblies. 
 Somebody must go, and so one or two were 
 chosen by each community to represent the rest ; 
 and the wise men of the Witenagemot of old, to- 
 gether with the heads of the great church estab- 
 lishments, gradually came to be looked upon as 
 the King's counsellors, and were called together 
 to confer upon such questions as concerned the 
 whole commonwealth. 
 
 It is by no means a good sign at the present 
 time that, instead of wishing to attend to their 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 51 
 
 own business, so many butchers and bakers and 
 candle-stick-makers are eager to enter Parlia- 
 ment, to attend to other people's business. It is 
 not the good old Saxon way. 
 
 In America, as in other democracies, our mis- 
 takes and our political troubles have mostly 
 arisen from a wrong interpretation of "govern- 
 ment by the people." It has never meant, and 
 can never be successful when it is interpreted as 
 meaning, that each individual shall take an 
 active part in government. This is the catch- 
 penny doctrine, preached from the platform by 
 the demagogue. The real spirit of "govern- 
 ment by the people" is merely that they should 
 at all times have control, and keep control, of 
 their governors, as these Saxons have done. 
 
 No one would dream of harking back to the 
 primitive days when every man sewed together 
 his own skins for clothes and for foot-wear, 
 made his own hut, caught his own fish, killed 
 each for himself his meat, and picked each for 
 himself his berries, and was his own priest, his 
 own physician, and his own policeman. We 
 now know that this was waste of time and energy. 
 We find it more convenient, and more conducive 
 to a long life, and a comfortable life, to divide 
 ourselves up into bakers, and butchers, and tail- 
 ors, and berry pickers, and priests, and police- 
 
52 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 men, and physicians. It is only in politics that 
 we grope blindly amongst primitive methods for 
 a solution of the problem of government. France, 
 with her fantastic theories, and what proved her 
 horrible fiasco, influenced our beginnings, and 
 followed by that have come the Irish with their 
 hatred of England and the English; and the 
 mating of the French philosophy, and the Irish 
 fact, have turned us aside from, and made us 
 hesitating in, our allegiance to the only form of 
 free government which has ever been successful 
 in the world, and which is ours by ancestral 
 right. It must be a poor race which cannot throw 
 up from the mass of men a certain number whose 
 wealth, leisure, and ability fit them for the work 
 of governing ; just as others amongst us are best 
 fitted to bake or brew, or teach or preach, or 
 make clothes or hats, or to dig in the fields. To 
 say that every man is fitted to govern is to hark 
 back to the days when every man was his own 
 huntsman, fisherman, cook and tailor. 
 
 We have millions in America who are just 
 learning the alphabet of free government, and 
 they are still flattered by political parasites with 
 loud voices and leather larynxes. Our parlia- 
 ments and assemblies have too large a pro- 
 portion, not of the brawn and brains that have 
 made America a great nation in fifty years, but 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 53 
 
 the semi-successful, the slippery and resourceful 
 who live on the people, and by the people, and 
 for themselves. 
 
 He is but a mean American who believes that 
 this will last. The time approaches when Amer- 
 icans will slough off this hampering political 
 clothing, put upon them by Latin and Celtic 
 parasites, and insist upon being governed by the 
 best amongst them, by the wisest amongst them, 
 by the successful amongst them, and not by 
 those whose living is derived by governing others, 
 because they cannot govern themselves. It is 
 not because we are fools that the present condi- 
 tion continues, it is because we are weighed down 
 with the responsibilities of nation making. We 
 have succeeded commercially and in all material 
 ways marvellously. In fifty years we have be- 
 come the rival of the strongest, and the com- 
 mercial portent to which every finger in Europe 
 points. Let this same energy be turned upon set- 
 ting our domestic political affairs in order and 
 the change in government will be as complete, 
 and come as quickly, as in other matters. We 
 have allowed our idlers to govern, with a splen- 
 did honor-roll of exceptions ; we shall ere long 
 insist that our ablest shall take their places in the 
 good old Saxon way. 
 
 Strangely enough, however, the House of 
 
54 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Lords still remains the most democratic institu- 
 tion in England. It may still claim for itself to 
 be the Witenagemot, or gathering of wise men, 
 and one wonders why it does not defend itself 
 along those lines. 
 
 It is not a house of birth or ancestry, for it is 
 composed to-day to an overwhelming extent of 
 successful men from almost every walk in life. 
 No one cares a fig what a man's ancestry was in 
 this matter-of-fact land if he succeeds, if he be- 
 comes rich and powerful. 
 
 William the Conqueror himself was a bastard, 
 and his mother was the daughter of an humble 
 tanner of Falaise. 
 
 The mother of the great Queen Elizabeth was 
 the daughter of a plain English gentleman. 
 
 A pot-girl of Westminster married the master 
 of the pot-house. After his death she consulted 
 a lawyer named Hyde. Mr. Hyde married her. 
 Mr. Hyde afterward became Lord Chancellor, 
 ^ with the title of Lord Clarendon, and his wife, 
 the former pot-girl, bore him a daughter. This 
 daughter married the Duke of York, and be- 
 came the mother of Mary and Anne Stewart, 
 both afterward queens of England. 
 
 It is evident that if queens of England may 
 have a barmaid for grandmother, lesser mortals 
 need not fret on the subject of ancestry. 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 55 
 
 The Englishman would not be what he is, nor 
 would he in the least be transmitting his very 
 valuable Saxon heritage, if he gave up his demo- 
 cratic custom of an aristocracy of power for the 
 feeble continental custom of an aristocracy of 
 birth. What the one and the other is to-day 
 answers the question as to the relative merits of 
 the two systems without need of discussion. 
 The English, though nowadays many of them 
 do not know it themselves, are the most demo- 
 cratic of all nations. 
 
 William the Conqueror divided England 
 among the commanders of his army, and con- 
 ferred about twenty earldoms; not one of these 
 exists to-day. Nor do any of the honors con- 
 ferred by William Rufus, 1087-1100; Henry the 
 First, 1100-1135; Stephen, 1135-1154; Henry 
 the Second, 1154-1189; Richard the First, 
 1189-1199; or John, 1199-1216. 
 
 All the dukedoms created from the institution 
 of Edward the Third, 1327-1377, down to the 
 commencement of the reign of Charles the 
 Second, 1649, except Norfolk, and Somerset, 
 and Cornwall — the title held by the Prince 
 of Wales — have perished. 
 
 Winchester and Worcester, the latter merged 
 in the dukedom of Beaufort, are the only mar- 
 quisates older than George the Third, 1760-1820. 
 
56 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Of all earldoms conferred by the Normans, 
 Plantagenets and Tudors, only eleven remain, 
 and six of these are merged in higher honors. 
 
 The House of Lords to-day does not number 
 among its members a single male descendant of 
 any of the barons who were chosen to enforce 
 Magna Charta. The House of Lords does not 
 contain a single male descendant of the peers 
 who fought at Agincourt. There is only a single 
 family in all the realm, Wrottesleys, which can 
 boast of a male descent from the date of the in- 
 stitution of the Garter, 1349. 
 
 In a word, the present House of Lords is con- 
 spicuously and predominantly a democratic 
 body, chosen from the successful of the land. 
 
 Seventy of the peers were ennobled on account 
 of distinction in the practice of the law alone. 
 
 The Dukes of Leeds trace back to a cloth- 
 worker; the Earls of Radnor to a Turkey mer- 
 chant ; the Earls of Craven to a tailor ; the fami- 
 lies of Dartmouth, Ducie, Pomfret, Tankerville, 
 Dormer, Romney, Dudley, Fitzwilliam, Cowper, 
 Leigh, Darnley, Hill, Normanby, all sprang from 
 London shops and counting-houses, and that not 
 so very long ago. 
 
 Ashburton, Carrington, Belper, Overstone, 
 Mount Stephen, Hindlip, Burton, Battersea, 
 Glenesk, Aldenham, Lister, Avebury, Burn- 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 57 
 
 ham, Biddulph, Northcliffe, Nunburnholme, 
 Winterstoke, Rothschild, Brassey, Revelstoke, 
 Strathcona and Mount Royal, Michelham, and 
 others, too many to mention, have taken their 
 places among the peers by force of long purses 
 gained in trade. 
 
 Lord Belper, for example, created in 1856, is 
 the grandson of Jedediah Strutt, who was the 
 son of a small farmer, and made wonderful 
 ribbed stockings. 
 
 " Wealth however got, in England makes 
 Lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes. 
 Antiquity and birth are needless here: 
 'Tis impudence and money makes the peer. 
 
 Great families of yesterday we show; 
 
 And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who." 
 
 The Saxon system still prevails. Those who 
 push themselves to the front, those who accumu- 
 late a residue of power in the shape of leisure, 
 are called upon to govern so that the others need 
 not be bothered by such matters. It has been 
 harder in some ages than in others for the man, 
 unassisted by birth, to rise. But there has been 
 no time in England when it has been wholly im- 
 possible. As a consequence of this, there is 
 probably no body of men in the world who com- 
 bine such a variety of experience and knowledge 
 
58 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 amongst them as the House of Lords. There 
 are one or more representatives of every branch 
 of human industry and professional skill. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, there is no assembly 
 where a man could go — granted that all the 
 peers were present — where he would be more 
 certain of getting sound advice upon every sub- 
 ject, from higher mathematics and abstruse law 
 down to the shoeing of a horse or the splicing of 
 a cable. 
 
 Why the English themselves, or, at any rate, 
 certain of their number, wish to abolish this as- 
 sembly of the picked brains and ability in every 
 walk in life, from literature and chemistry to 
 beer-brewing and railroad building, I, as an 
 American, cannot understand. It is the cul- 
 mination of the essential philosophy of Saxon- 
 dom. This is what the race has been at for two 
 thousand years, not to be too much governed by, 
 but to permit to govern, those who have proved 
 themselves most capable of doing so. 
 
 The average number of barons summoned to 
 Parliament by Edward the Second was 74; the 
 average of the reign of Edward the Third was 
 43. At the beginning of the reign of Henry IV 
 the lay members of the House of Lords consisted 
 of 4 dukes, 1 marquis, 10 earls, and 34 barons. 
 Henry VIII only assembled 51 peers in his Par- 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 59 
 
 liament ; while only 82 sat in the first Parliament 
 of James the First; and 117 in the first Parlia- 
 ment of Charles the First. At the end of the 
 reign of Charles the Second there were but 176 
 names on the roll of the Lords. The roll was in- 
 creased to 192 peerages before the death of 
 William the Third; to 209 before the death of 
 Anne; to 216 before the death of George the 
 First; to 229 before the death of George the 
 Second ; to 339 at the death of George the Third ; 
 to 396 before the death of George the Fourth; 
 to 456 at the death of William the Fourth; 
 to 512 in 1881; to 541 in 1892; and the total 
 number at the present time (1908), including 
 Spiritual and Law Lords, is 853, 200 of whom 
 have been created since 1882, and nearly half of 
 them since 1830. 
 
 Ah, but some one answers, suppose these men 
 govern badly, or suppose they cease to represent 
 the nation, or suppose the sons of these men are 
 not of the calibre of their fathers. The last sup- 
 position is easily answered. We have seen al- 
 ready what a mushroom assembly it is from the 
 point of view of ancient lineage. They are by 
 no means all gentlemen, in the technical sense 
 of that word; and by no means without excep- 
 tion worthy. But that only adds the necessary 
 human factor of fallibility. 
 
60 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The adult males in a town meeting in Hing- 
 ham, Massachusetts, for example, could trace 
 back to male ancestors, who attended that same 
 town meeting an hundred years before, in 
 greater numbers, in proportion to their total 
 number, than could the members of the House 
 of Lords to ancestors who had sat in that same 
 chamber. Nor is it easy to see wherein they fail 
 to represent the nation, since they come from 
 every and all classes; nor why they should gov- 
 ern badly, since they are chosen only after prov- 
 ing themselves to be of superior ability and 
 sound judgment. It is true that a son may not 
 turn out to have the same ability as his father, 
 but if the son of a Rothschild has ability enough 
 to keep the money his father made, he must, in 
 these days of liquid securities, be a man of no 
 small ability. Those who are weaklings do not 
 last long in the hurly-burly of the modern world. 
 We have seen how very few peers are the male 
 descendants of houses dating back any distance. 
 God and nature turn out the incompetents al- 
 most as quickly as would the electorate. The 
 chances of any living man having a male 
 descendant able to keep what was left him, 
 and also able to get more, and beget more, 
 an hundred years after his time, is very small 
 indeed. 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 61 
 
 Indeed, this system evolved from sound Saxon 
 sense has done more than anything else to pro- 
 duce that wholeness in the English social body 
 which is a salient feature of English life. There 
 are, or at any rate have been until very lately, 
 fewer disquieting social and political segrega- 
 tions due to class distinctions in England than in 
 any other nation in the world. 
 
 Grandsons, and younger sons, of peers drift 
 back into the upper middle class and remain 
 there unless they rise by their own exertions; 
 while there is a continual absorption of the 
 strong, the competent, and the successful into 
 the peerage. This mixes up and leavens all 
 classes. Noble sons become commoners, noble 
 commoners become peers. 
 
 This is what explains the existence of the 
 House of Lords in so democratic a country as 
 England. It exists because it is the most demo- 
 cratic institution in England, and because in the 
 long run it has been recognized as an assembly 
 whose opinion is as nearly as possible the opin- 
 ion of a consensus of the competent. 
 
 But here again we must bear in mind that we 
 are neither defending nor attacking. This 
 upper chamber so nearly represents what these 
 early Saxons were, perhaps not in its details 
 aware of, striving to produce, viz. : government 
 
62 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 with as little government as possible, and that, 
 by those with the leisure and capacity to do it, 
 that it deserves attentive study. 
 
 These people who have governed more of the 
 world, and a far larger population, than any 
 other people since time began, deserve respectful 
 consideration for their methods in, and their 
 philosophy of, government. Any socialistic 
 sneering, or republican ribaldry, on the subject 
 of the British system of government, must nec- 
 essarily react upon the foolish one who indulges 
 in them. The ready answer is: We are taking 
 charge of one in every five square miles, and 
 one in every five inhabitants of the globe ; if you 
 can do it better, why do you not do it ? 
 
 It is a notable feature of the history of this 
 great governing people that they have had little 
 desire to take part in the governing themselves. 
 The gathering of the wise men, the assembly, in 
 short, at which the nation sat in council, was 
 open to all, but by a natural process was reduced 
 to the attendance of those who could afford the 
 time and the money to go. By an easy step those 
 who had the time and the money gradually be- 
 came the great ones of the land. 
 
 William the Conqueror only imitated the ex- 
 ample of his predecessors in calling together the 
 wise and the great of the nation to consider the 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 63 
 
 customs, and thence to determine the laws, of 
 the kingdom. 
 
 It was Simon de Montfort who led the free- 
 men against the barons grown too proud, con- 
 quered them, and summoned a parliament by 
 directing the sheriffs to return two knights 
 for each county, and two burgesses for each 
 borough in the kingdom; and there you have 
 the beginning of Parliament. They were not 
 clamoring to govern, but they found themselves 
 forced to take a hand lest the barons should 
 grow to think governing their right. 
 
 The statute of a generation later than this 
 time, which still remains on the statute book, 
 begins by declaring that no tax or aid shall 
 be taken without the good-will and assent of 
 archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, 
 burgesses, and other freemen of the land. 
 
 The profound and real difference between the 
 philosophy of democracy and the philosophy of 
 aristocracy is that the former emphasizes the 
 identity of men, and the latter the diversity of 
 men. The one makes democracies, the other 
 makes monarchies. But men are all alike, and 
 they are all unlike, and either proposition, car- 
 ried to its extreme, defeats itself; in the former 
 liberty becomes license, and in the latter order 
 becomes despotism. The pendulum swings 
 
64 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 back and forth between the two extremes, and 
 down to this day the English have succeeded in 
 reconciling the claims of both philosophies, and 
 of keeping the peace between them. Their gift 
 of the solution of the problem of government to 
 mankind rivals the great gift of Art by the 
 Greeks, and of Law by the Romans. 
 
 But even to this day these common-sense 
 people care nothing for the fiction, for the trap- 
 pings, of government. Even now acts of Parlia- 
 ment begin: "Be it enacted by the King's most 
 excellent Majesty, by and with advice and con- 
 sent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and 
 Commons in this present Parliament assem- 
 bled." The King knows, and the Lords spiritual 
 and temporal know, and the Commons know, 
 that the King does not make the laws, or enforce 
 the laws, but they are all equally willing to have 
 him appear to do so. They have no taste for 
 ostentatious participation in governing even now. 
 They would still rather mind their own business, 
 though there are, alas, signs nowadays that they 
 are losing somewhat their Saxon heritage in this 
 respect. 
 
 In the past they have taken a hand in govern- 
 ing only when their governors overstepped the 
 bounds, and attempted to govern with the phys- 
 ical and financial aid, but without the consent of 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 65 
 
 the governed. Then, over and over again, 
 against barons or king, or whomsoever it might 
 be, they have risen and demanded to be governed 
 as little as need be, but according to their ancient 
 custom of personal liberty for each one. 
 
 One hears occasionally in the inebriation of 
 exuberance which vents itself in song, that: 
 Britons never shall be slaves. It is well known, 
 of course, that Britons have been slaves, and 
 worn the collar of a Roman master, but the Sax- 
 ons, their successors, never have been slaves. 
 This is interesting because practically down to 
 1867, or forty years ago, the English govern- 
 ment has been in a very few hands indeed. 
 
 The temptation must have been constant ever 
 since the Romans left and the Saxons came, for 
 the small governing class to usurp all power. 
 And yet with practically no voice in the govern- 
 ment, this has never been accomplished, for it has 
 always been prevented by the people themselves. 
 
 It should be remembered that long after the 
 development of government into a House of 
 Lords and a House of Commons, these two bod- 
 ies were controlled by a very few men. It is 
 said that as late as 1793, out of 513 members of 
 Parliament, 309 of them owed their election to 
 the nomination either of the Treasury, or of some 
 162 individuals who controlled the voters. 
 
66 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The House of Commons of 1801, including 
 
 V the Irish and Scotch members, consisted of 658 
 
 members, and of these 425 were returned either 
 
 on the nomination, or on the recommendation 
 
 of 252 patrons. 
 
 Thus has England been governed persistently 
 by the few. Nor has this been against the wishes 
 of the many. We have seen how, time after 
 time, the many have demanded, and conquered 
 for themselves, what they considered to be for 
 their welfare and their happiness; but constant 
 personal participation in government has not 
 been deemed a necessity of personal freedom, 
 but rather, indeed, a drag upon it. I am in- 
 clined to look upon this as the most important 
 factor in their wonderful growth as a nation. 
 
 In 1832 the borough franchise was confined to 
 householders whose houses were worth not less 
 than ten pounds a year, and the county franchise 
 was enlarged by the admission of copyholders, 
 leaseholders, and of tenants whose holding was 
 of the clear annual value of fifty pounds. Then 
 and there, and for the first time in the history 
 of the nation, England was practically governed 
 by the middle class. 
 
 In 1867 this was followed by a still more 
 sweeping reform, and, by the act of that year, 
 every freeholder whose freehold was of the value 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 67 
 
 of forty shillings a year; every copyholder and 
 leaseholder, of the annual value of five pounds; 
 and every householder whose rent was not less 
 than twelve pounds a year, was entitled to vote 
 for the county. Every householder in a borough, 
 and every lodger who paid ten pounds a year 
 for his lodging and had been resident for more 
 than twelve months, was entitled to vote for the 
 borough member. This is to all intents and 
 purposes male adult suffrage. 
 
 Nevertheless, up to the election of members to 
 this present Parliament, when an unusual num- 
 ber of labor members were elected. Parliament 
 has been composed of an overwhelming majority 
 chosen from the leisure classes. 
 
 Pitt once said that an Englishman with an 
 income of ten thousand pounds a year had a right 
 to be a peer. The English voter still, to a large 
 extent, takes the same view. He seems to hold 
 that those have the best claim to go to Parliament 
 who have the leisure and wealth to enable them 
 to go conveniently. Even now when a danger- 
 ously large number of people — some say thirty 
 millions — are always on the verge of starvation, 
 the voter is but little touched by that despair of 
 the individual in his own manhood, reduced to a 
 system, known as socialism. He still believes in 
 his gentry as most to be trusted, and best quah- 
 
68 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 fied to govern. He has a rooted distrust of those 
 who wish to be paid to govern. He has not 
 ceased to look upon the business of governing 
 as a duty, not a trade. 
 
 Some instinct tells him, for no one would ac- 
 cuse the British voter of being either a philoso- 
 pher, or of being unusually intelligent even, that 
 the solution of the problem of his lack of wealth 
 does not lie in the fact that his gentry have too 
 much. To take another man's coat does not 
 take with it the ability to keep that coat against 
 all comers, any more than to exchange gloves 
 with the man who has just knocked you out in a 
 sparring bout would enable you in turn to knock 
 him out. That easy solution of inequality, that 
 because somebody else has more, therefore it is 
 that I have less, has not fooled the Englishman 
 as yet. He has only to look across the Channel 
 to see the results of that philosophy. When he 
 looks he sees a nation that has so belittled its 
 men that they can only prevent themselves from 
 being swallowed up by their enemies by lending 
 their hard-earned gold to Russia, an autocracy 
 with which, of course, an honest republic could 
 have nothing in common, and by accepting the 
 friendship of England, a monarchy, because 
 England wishes a buffer-state between herself 
 and Germany. 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 69 
 
 In an hundred years England has grown great, 
 while, since the Revolution, France has diminished 
 to the stature of an epicene amongst nations, 
 trafficking in her ideals and in her honor, and 
 advertising the virtue of her capital for sale to all 
 comers as her principal stock in trade. She is 
 like a pretty woman who will sell anything for 
 security and comfort. This lesson has not been 
 lost upon the Englishman, dull as he is. 
 
 Fox, Liverpool, and Lord John Russell, all 
 entered Parliament before they were of age, 
 though this was technically a breach of the law, 
 which required that a member should be of age, 
 a male, and of some wealth. So closely indeed 
 have these people clung to their tradition about 
 the land, that many, no doubt, will be surprised 
 to learn that it was only at the beginning of the 
 reign of the late Queen Victoria that one could 
 become a member of Parliament without being 
 the possessor of a certain amount of landed 
 property. He must be a landlord, in short. 
 
 He might have thousands invested in securities 
 of all kinds, that mattered not; he must be a 
 landholder. They came to England to be free 
 landholders, and when Queen Victoria came to 
 the throne that was still their ideal of what a man 
 fit to assist in governing should be. 
 
 As late as the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 
70 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 tury England was almost entirely rural. The 
 greater number of the towns were merely country 
 towns. Perhaps the secret of the independence 
 and the homogeneity of the population is to be 
 found in this multitude of men who firmly be- 
 lieved in the land, were permanently settled upon 
 the land, and whose claim to personal dignity and 
 political and social distinction rested upon the 
 possession of the land. 
 
 We have heard in our own day, in America, 
 often repeated, the cry: Back to the land! 
 Nowhere will one find stronger arguments to 
 support such advice than in the history of the 
 Saxons in England. One might choose as the 
 three requisites of a people that should prosper 
 and conquer, that they should believe in God, 
 live on the land, and let their leaders govern. 
 
 It is only in comparatively recent times that 
 England has ceased to be a nation of farmers. 
 In the middle of the fourteenth century the popu- 
 lation of England and Wales was probably about 
 2,300,000; at the end o| the seventeenth century 
 somethingover5,000,000;andinl831, 14,000,000. 
 
 The expansion of England into an empire 
 grows as naturally and as surely out of this loye 
 of theirs for the land and liberty as the first 
 settlements of England by the Saxons grew out 
 of this same desire. 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 71 
 
 Their Saxon plain was crowded. The Jutes 
 led by descendants of the warlike and roving 
 Odin, needed companions in arms, and these 
 Saxons followed them on one of their excursions 
 to England. 
 
 Finding that the Saxons settled peaceably and 
 industriously on the land, and acted as a buffer- 
 state between their own settlement and the rov- 
 ing Britons, they induced still more Saxons to 
 come over, and more came, and then more and 
 more, until they became the predominant factor 
 in the settlement of the country. 
 
 They were not, as is generally supposed, and 
 as is often erroneously stated, of the fighting, 
 marauding, restless breed of the piratical races, 
 which from time to time ravaged the coasts of 
 both what is now England and what is now 
 France. 
 
 In spite of their many wars, the English, as 
 were their peasant ancestors the Saxons, are not 
 a warlike people. Si res poscat, writes Tacitus. 
 If it is worth while they fight. But they fought 
 not as did the fiercer tribes, merely for the love 
 of fighting. Read their history and you find — 
 and it greatly alters certain preconceived opinions 
 — that they were not, and are not, a war-loving, 
 or a quarrelsome race. 
 
 It is often said that England is always fighting 
 
 V 
 
72 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 somewhere. When one considers the enormous 
 area of land, and the varied populations she con- 
 trols, it is not surprising that she should have 
 constant trouble on her hands. On the other 
 hand, if one investigates these wars, big and little, 
 they all fall under one general head : the protec- 
 tion of her subjects in the possession of the land. 
 The two wars with China were to protect her 
 landowners in India who trafficked in opium 
 with the Chinese. The war in the Crimea was 
 against Russia, looming up as her rival in India. 
 The support of the Allies against Napoleon was a 
 necessary commercial expedient to save her ship- 
 ping and her commerce. The war with America 
 was again, at first, a question of commercial 
 significance alone. The war in Africa was plain- 
 ly enough for the upholding of the status of her 
 citizens against the Dutch. There is a superb 
 selfishness involved in each and every one of these 
 conflicts. No one can defend for a moment the 
 terrible hypocrisy of the race, in their insistence 
 upon the right of their traders to debauch the 
 Chinese by the sale of opium against the wishes 
 of the Chinese authorities. Imagine the horror 
 of the Englishman should a neighbor nation 
 insist upon the right to sell cocaine in England 
 whether he liked it or not, and give as a reason 
 that a certain colony derived a large revenue from 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 73 
 
 the sale of cocaine, which would be cut off if 
 England refused to allow its sale in her territories. 
 This is exactly what happened in China. The 
 British colony of Hong Kong is a monument to 
 England's infamous selfishness where her trade 
 is concerned. Hong Kong was taken from the 
 Chinese as an indemnity for daring to make war 
 upon England's opium trade. 
 
 The war with America was due to selfishness, 
 coupled with forgetfulness. The Englishman 
 went to America, almost exactly as the Saxon 
 went to England. He went for land and liberty. 
 The settlers were agriculturists, who founded 
 free estates and drove off the warring, nomadic 
 tribes, just as the Saxons drove off the Britons. 
 These American settlers were of the same class 
 as those they left behind them. Let us get it 
 out of our heads and keep it out, that England is 
 an aristocracy. It is not and never has been. 
 It has not and never has had a noblesse. At 
 once, indeed, almost before they set foot on land, 
 the wiser and wealthier among them, are set up 
 in authority over them, not to rule them, but to 
 govern for them. Here we have the same 
 institutions again, and the same dogged insistence 
 upon liberty to till the soil in peace. But when 
 England, forgetting her own history, and her own 
 blood, set out to rule and to tax without repre- 
 
74 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 sentation these people, she was precipitating 
 exactly the same kinds of conflict as had taken 
 place between John and the barons; between 
 Simon de Montf ort and the barons ; and between 
 Charles and the Parliament. The result was 
 foredoomed. The Saxons can only live in one 
 way, and that is by ruling themselves. As the 
 greatest representative of the Saxon race of the 
 last two hundred years put it: A government 
 of the people, for the people, by the people. 
 Their confidence in this form of government has 
 resulted in forcing its adoption upon all peoples, 
 and all countries, that they control. That any 
 family, clan, tribe, or nation should wish to live 
 under other than this Saxon arrangement, is to 
 them unthinkable. 
 
 Lord Curzon, late viceroy of India, in a volume 
 entitled, "Problems of the Far East," writes as 
 follows in his dedication: "To those who be- 
 lieve that the British Empire is, under Providence, 
 the greatest instrument for good that the world 
 has ever seen and who hold with the writer, that 
 its work in the Far East is not yet accomplished, 
 this book is dedicated." Where, in the history 
 of mankind, may one look to find such a mag- 
 nificent assumption of virtue and omniscience, 
 coupled with incomprehensible self-satisfaction ? 
 It makes one fearful for the destinies of the race 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 75 
 
 when one sees it proclaim itself thus arrogant. 
 Here is a haughty egotism that would make 
 Alexander, Cgesar, or Napoleon turn pale. Who 
 believes that the world is better where England 
 dominates .P The English. Who believes that 
 India is happier ? The English. Who believes 
 that Ireland is happier .? The English. Who 
 believes that the East under English protection is 
 happier.? The English. Who believes that North 
 America is happier.? The English. But what 
 do the four hundred millions of people, controlled 
 by these million English gentlemen, whose om- 
 niscient prophet Lord Curzon is, — what do 
 they think.? What do they say.? Personally I 
 am not questioning or criticising. I am merely 
 a child making notes. This amazing assumption 
 that England has done more for the world than 
 any other agency, is a characteristic of these 
 people that cannot be too often insisted upon. 
 As I have said before, it is not a pose with them. 
 It is not impudence, it is their rooted belief in 
 their own superiority. Anybody who starts out 
 to have dealings with them, either personally 
 or along international lines, must take that 
 into consideration. They know only one way. 
 That is their way, and their way is the best 
 way and is sanctioned by God, who, by the way, 
 is the God of the English national church. 
 
76 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 It is magnificent, is it not ? but it makes one 
 stop just for a moment to get one's breath. 
 
 Let some one tell us what fantastic arrange- 
 ment of molecules turned the youthful rake into 
 a St. Augustine, the unknown country lad into a 
 Shakespeare, the Corsican peasant into a Na- 
 poleon, or the Western rail-splitter and country 
 lawyer into a Lincoln, and when these are all 
 explained, there will remain an even greater 
 mystery: how these Saxon peasants became the 
 English Empire of to-day. 
 
 It is said often enough that a man who restricts 
 his energies to the pursuit of one end, who thinks 
 of nothing else, saves himself for that alone, 
 keeps his eyes fixed on that alone, is likely to 
 succeed even though he be of mediocre powers. 
 The fable of the hare and the tortoise was written 
 as a brief commentary on this fact, that it's 
 doggedness that does it! These Saxons, since the 
 •historian's first introduction to them, inhabiting 
 that Saxon plain, have had apparently but one 
 aim : possession of the land in peace. Little by 
 little they have become the inheritors of one-fifth 
 of all the land there is. We have traced here, 
 by a mere thread of narrative, their history, and 
 we have noted their present status among the 
 nations of the world. We have seen nothing 
 brilliant or heroic, nothing Napoleonic in this 
 
WHO ARE THE ENGLISH? 77 
 
 story; but merely steady growth along ever the 
 same lines, aided by a genius for compromise. 
 They stop and wait when they must, they fight 
 when they must, they even pay to be let alone 
 when they must, they spill over into other 
 countries when they must, but land and liberty 
 they keep ever before them as their goal. Who 
 are the English, what are the English? They 
 are Saxons, who love the land, who love their 
 liberty, and whose sole claim to genius is their 
 common-sense. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 
 
 THERE are people, both English and for- 
 eign, who instead of Compromise, write 
 Hypocrisy; others still who write Con- 
 ciliation; while the more vehement write Phar- 
 isaism. 
 
 What has been written in other chapters of the 
 origins, development, and the manners and cus- 
 toms of the English, calls now for something in 
 the way of an explanation. The statements 
 therein contained must seem to the careful 
 reader, like a mere tumbling together of hap- 
 hazard and often violently contradictory facts. 
 There must be some string of philosophy of life 
 upon which to place such an odd lot of jewels, 
 some precious, some false, and many that are 
 ill-assorted, and which apparently do not in the 
 least belong side by side. Here we have a king 
 who is not a king in any autocratic sense; a 
 free people who are not a free people; a con- 
 stitution which is not a constitution; an aristo- 
 
 78 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 79 
 
 cratic House of Lords composed of successful 
 merchants, manufacturers, journalists, lawyers 
 and money-lenders, leavened by a minority of 
 men of ancient lineage; a State Church which 
 is not a State Church; a nation professing 
 Christianity, but nevertheless continually at war, 
 sodden with drink, and offering all its prizes of 
 wealth and station, to the selfish, the successful 
 and the strong, who have possessed themselves, 
 — some thirty-eight thousand of them, — of 
 three-fourths of the total land area of England 
 and Wales, and who, with their State priests in 
 Parliament, to voice the fact that they are a 
 Christian nation, spend the bulk of their in- 
 come for war, drink and sport. 
 
 All this is not my business, or yours, gentle 
 reader. We can neither mend nor mar. If 
 these forty millions choose so to live in their 
 island home, it is no affair of the outsider; un- 
 less it is attempted by these same islanders to 
 pose as the missionaries of light to the rest of the 
 world. This is exactly what they do. They not 
 only pose to all the world, but they have imposed 
 themselves upon one-fifth of the world, with this 
 rather shabby article of civilization, as their 
 sample of salvation. One need not, however, 
 refrain from criticism on the score of the sensi- 
 tiveness of the patient. The British public is as 
 
80 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 impervious to criticism as an elephant's hide to 
 stabbing by sticks of boiled macaroni. 
 
 Yesterday was Sunday. London was silent 
 and solemn, in the gloom of a depressing ortho- 
 doxy, which denies drink, food and amusement 
 to all except the rich. I was present at the 
 Christian Science church in the morning, and 
 listened to two young people, standing side by 
 side at separate reading-desks which were en- 
 shrined in a profusion of lilies. Their appear- 
 ance was that of rather self-conscious drapers' 
 assistants, their voices were mechanical and their 
 pronunciation provincial. The young woman 
 read passages, which she prefaced as from 
 "Mark," "Luke," "Matthew." Why they were 
 deprived of their usual titles of courtesy, I am at 
 a loss to know; just as I have always been at a 
 loss to understand why such titles as: "Jesus 
 Christ and the Social Question," and the like, 
 are paraded in print, titles that even a heretic, 
 if he be a gentleman, must regard as unscholarly, 
 or offensive, or callously vulgar; or to put the 
 best face upon it, an effeminate display of that 
 carefully shielded hot-house courage, known as 
 opportunism. The young man responded with 
 commentaries from a volume which he told us 
 was written by "Mrs."— why "Mrs.", if the 
 other authors were titleless .^ — "Mary Baker 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 81 
 
 G. Eddy." These commentaries were a meta- 
 physical jargon which left me mentally be- 
 wildered. I am more or less familiar with the 
 common terms of psychology, but I heard them 
 now flung together, as a child might toss its 
 alphabet blocks together on the floor, spelling 
 no words to be found in any known dictionary. 
 The audience must, I thought, be of a superior 
 order of intellectual development, and I looked 
 curiously at the faces around me. I have sat 
 often in the House of Commons, and in the House 
 of Lords, and if I am any judge of physiognomy, 
 these listeners to what was Greek to me were 
 certainly inferior in intelligence to the average 
 of those in either of the two chambers. It was 
 with a start of surprise, too, that I heard amongst 
 these sickless ones, coughing and hawking, indi- 
 cating that they had failed to Bakerize the then 
 prevalent epidemic of influenza. 
 
 In the afternoon I attended the church of the 
 Jesuit Fathers, where I heard Father Bernard 
 Vaughan, who is, I believe, castigator-in-chief to 
 the sins of London society, preach upon the sub- 
 ject of the Devil. He told us that science and 
 philosophy had nothing to do with this question, 
 and that there was of course a personal Devil now 
 just as much as there w^as a personal Devil at 
 the time when our first ancestors, Adam and 
 
82 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Eve, committed that fatal pomological mistake in 
 the Garden of Eden. This I beheve is true! It 
 may be a somewhat Jesuitical way of putting it, 
 but taken one way or the other it may be believed 
 by all, believers and doubters alike. 
 
 In the evening I was present at the cathedral 
 church, St. Paul's, where I heard a distinguished 
 cleric of the State Church, in a foggy, but far- 
 reaching, voice, calling upon "this Christian Em- 
 pire of Great Britain" to interfere to prevent the 
 horrible atrocities now practised upon the natives 
 of the Congo Free State. He pictured the canni- 
 bals of that region as having been "free" and 
 "happy," — what glaring and ridiculous hypoc- 
 risy ! — until King Leopold, through his agents, 
 had enslaved them into the search for the rubber, 
 which alone of commercial articles, is as elastic 
 as that monarch's morals. As I sat and listened 
 in these very different places of worship, and in 
 no scoflSng mood, — for he is a braver man than 
 I who is not drawn to think of his latter end 
 during a Sunday spent in London, — I was im- 
 pressed by the aloofness of each and all of these 
 services, from any connection with the sad prob- 
 lems that confront England on every hand. 
 
 Here was a handful of Englishmen and Eng- 
 lishwomen in a costly tabernacle, attempting to 
 mezmerize the world with the cabalistic messages 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 83 
 
 of a rich and uncultivated old woman hailing 
 from Massachusetts. There was a church full 
 listening attentively to a mediaeval portrayal of 
 the Devil as a terrorizer of sinners; and, last of 
 all, a high officer of the State Church, lashing a 
 foreign potentate, who is best known on the Con- 
 tinent by the name of a popular harlot. Mrs. 
 Eddy, The Devil, and King Leopold! Strange 
 texts, for a people at close grips with poverty, 
 high taxes, drunkenness, gambling, and lack 
 of schooling at home; people peddling opium to 
 the Chinese, pandering to priestcraft in Ireland, 
 with twenty-five thousand Chinamen slaving in 
 their gold-mines in South Africa, and with hun- 
 dreds of thousands dying of starvation in India, 
 on their hands abroad. 
 
 Some people call this hypocrisy, some pharisa- 
 ism. But there is no need of harsh names. He 
 can have had but little practise with the pen who 
 does not find it easy enough to call names, to 
 fling epithets; but he who does it is quite un- 
 worthy to be trusted with so dangerous a weapon, 
 and so useful a surgeon's knife. I write these 
 things to explain, not to revile. This is a great 
 country, — we have said it scores of times al- 
 ready in these pages, and therefore it is worth 
 while getting at the meaning of these things. 
 They are not pharisees, they are compromisers. 
 
84 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 They have drilled themselves through centuries, 
 till this mental haziness, which permits them to 
 hold two contradictory propositions at one and 
 the same time, has become as part of their 
 being. 
 
 Their King, though King by right of birth, has 
 been set aside, has been beheaded, and is now in 
 the hands of a cabinet, chosen, not as it used to 
 be, by him, but by his people. George the First, 
 who could not speak English or understand it, 
 when he came to the throne, and who was wont 
 to communicate with his ministers in bad Latin, 
 gave up attending the meetings of the cabinet 
 because he could not understand its discussions; 
 thus was the last link snapped in the chain which 
 held the cabinet in the grasp of the King. As 
 late as the time of Queen Victoria, she besought 
 her friends in the Parliament not to impose 
 Gladstone upon her as Prime Minister again, a 
 man whom she disliked, but they were helpless. 
 Gladstone was the man appointed by the suffrage 
 of the people, and Queen Victoria must accept 
 him. So little is the King, King. On the other 
 hand, in the case of this present King, the King 
 is the people plus the experience, the knowledge, 
 the impartial situation, and unprejudiced mind, 
 which the people ought to have before making 
 a decision, or passing judgment. That is the 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 85 
 
 ideal constitutional ruler, and the present King 
 comes very close to the ideal. At any rate, King 
 Edward the Seventh, is, through his popularity 
 with all classes, more powerful than any man, 
 any class, any sect, any minister, or either of the 
 houses of Parliament. His wisdom is not the 
 wisdom of the people, with the knowledge they 
 have; but the wisdom of the people, with the 
 knowledge and experience he has. It is the 
 knowledge of many, filtered through an unique 
 experience, and this comes close to being the 
 acme of common-sense. He is the most astute 
 diplomatist, and the most useful and charming 
 gentleman in Europe. So much is the King, 
 King! 
 
 The people is a free people, in the sense that 
 nowhere else in the world is the individual so 
 little ruled, hampered or oppressed; but politi- 
 cally they are bound fast by the chains of a House 
 of Lords, which, entirely independent of them, re- 
 jects their measures when it so pleases. And here 
 again is still another anomaly, for I believe that 
 the House of Lords, is, as a rule, a surer inter- 
 preter of the sober wishes of the English people 
 as a whole, than the House of Commons. 
 
 The constitution is so loosely mortared to- 
 gether that you can take a brick out, or put a 
 brick in, without greatly disturbing the house of 
 
86 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the State, which has been put together slowly, 
 from old customs grown to be laws. 
 
 The State Church may have its chief priests 
 appointed by a Prime Minister like Walpole, who 
 was a loose liver and a hard drinker; or by a 
 Chamberlain, who is a Unitarian; or by a 
 Morley, who is an agnostic; or even by a Jew 
 like Disraeli, whichever one may, or might hap- 
 pen to be. Prime Minister. The high priest of 
 this church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is 
 paid a salary of $75,000 a year, and the Bishop of 
 London a salary of $50,000 a year, while the bulk 
 of the clergy live on pittances, and thirty millions 
 of its flock are, it is said, continually on the verge 
 of starvation. What could be more grotesque ? 
 On the other hand, the Bishop of London, unless 
 I am woefully mistaken in my man, is one whose 
 fine spiritual sincerity shines in his face, and 
 whatever his intellectual calibre, his influence 
 must be worth many times ten thousand pounds 
 a year to London. Though I know nothing of 
 him personally, I feel very sure that very few 
 hundreds of those thousands of salary go for his 
 personal comfort. Here again the theory of 
 such payments to any priest is wrong, exasperat- 
 ingly wrong, but in this particular case, it no 
 doubt works well, not to say nobly. 
 
 The King, the people, the constitution, the 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 87 
 
 church, we have glanced at their contradictions. 
 Each and all unexplained are indefensible, but 
 by compromise they are made to work. It is 
 this constant search for the feasible, for the con- 
 venient, for the conciliatory, for the instantly 
 practicable, and the total ignoring of the logical, 
 and sometimes even of the true and the right, 
 which has given the name Per fide Albion to Eng- 
 land and made her so vulnerable to the accusa- 
 tion of hypocrisy. We all know how in this 
 complicated society of ours, in order to be free to 
 do even a little, one must escape from the tyranny 
 of trying to do too much. All the pictures may 
 not be painted on one canvas, all the books 
 may not be written in one chapter, all the 
 legislation may not be accomplished in one 
 session. 
 
 This philosophy of subordinating high princi- 
 ples to practical exigencies has reached its 
 climax in the House of Commons. In the first 
 place, the chamber where the commons meets has 
 not seats enough for its members. If all at- 
 tended at any one session, many would be forced 
 to stand. Every conceivable question comes up 
 for discussion in this assembly, which deals with 
 the whole Empire. This, by-the-way, makes it 
 the most cosmopolitan, the most influential, and 
 the most interesting legislative assembly in the 
 
88 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 world. A member asks that a clock on a certain 
 public building in London be regulated; another 
 member calls attention to the condition of the 
 Zoological Garden ; still another to the proposed 
 improvements of the Marble Arch ; another mem- 
 ber asks about the housing of the Chinese 
 laborers in Africa; another asks whether the 
 furniture in Irish school-houses is to be paid for 
 by the State or by the local rate-payers ; another 
 asks a question about the theft of the Crown 
 jewels at Dublin; another asks about the plan 
 for a governor of Macedonia; another brings up 
 the question of the playing of hand-organs in the 
 public streets of London; another asks if a sample 
 gun of those to be provided for the new territorial 
 army may be brought up to the House, for the 
 inspection of the members ; a Welshman rises to 
 complain that the new army scheme does not 
 consider sufficiently the feelings of the Welsh; 
 an officer of the Yeomanry asks who is to pay for 
 his horse if the horse dies while on duty; Irish- 
 men are continually to the fore with questions 
 concerning the Emerald Isle. 
 
 One wonders, as one sits and listens to this 
 hodge-podge of questions and answers about 
 everything under this British sun that never sets, 
 how anything is ever done. The present Parlia- 
 ment (1908) contains six hundred and seventy 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 89 
 
 members. More than one-eighth of the total are 
 irreconcilable Irishmen, who are there to bribe, 
 bully or balk the House, if thereby Ireland may 
 have a parliament of its own. Fifty-four are labor 
 members. Think for a moment of the problem 
 of dealing with the affairs of the greatest Empire 
 we know in such an assembly, with its multitude 
 of interests and its variety of personalities. No 
 wonder there is conciliation, even to the point 
 of flabbiness, otherwise nothing could be done. 
 The Minister of War, with a rotund person and 
 the face of a cherub, answers attacks, not in the 
 voice of Mars, but in the falsetto and piping tones 
 of peace. So with the other ministers. All are 
 tainted with this love of compromise. Even the 
 upright John Morley, independent politically, 
 easily first among writers of lucid English prose, 
 bends to defend India's exchequer in the sale 
 of opium to protesting China. 
 
 His Majesty's government licenses opium dens 
 in Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements, and 
 Ceylon, and in certain other Crown Colonies, de- 
 riving a considerable income therefrom. In the 
 year 1907 there were in Singapore alone 97 
 licensed shops for the retail of chandu, which 
 is opium prepared for smoking; and 449 rooms 
 licensed for smoking it. It may be said that 
 this is not a direct revenue to the government 
 
90 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of His Majesty, but as the Straits Settlements at 
 any rate have for many years contributed one- 
 fifth of their annual revenues to Imperial de- 
 fence purposes, it is a mere evasion not to recog- 
 nize it as such. This form of compromise is 
 merely a mush of concession. It is not the 
 philosophy of getting things done by giving way 
 a little here and a little there which is the pith 
 of English administrative success all over the 
 world, rather it is cold-blooded drowning of honor 
 in selfishness. If there is advantage for England, 
 other things, be they even truth and right, must 
 retire into the background. 
 
 "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. 
 Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 
 
 As Mr. Bryce wrote in the *' American Com- 
 monwealth," in spite of much political machinery 
 which works badly, and many social characteris- 
 tics which seem to point to disaster, there is a 
 certain something of buoyancy, of vigor, of hope, 
 in the Americans that convinced him of their 
 future triumph over all difficulties. Something of 
 the same thing is true of Mr. Bryce's own coun- 
 try. The people of one locality can never be 
 made completely familiar with the temper, tone 
 and atmosphere of the people of another locality 
 from a distance. Englishmen may read of 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 91 
 
 America, and Americans may read of England, 
 and yet both Englishmen and Americans find, 
 upon personal acquaintance with one country or 
 the other, that there is a certain vaporish some- 
 thing that has not been communicated, or even 
 brought much nearer, by steam, or photography, 
 or electricity, but which makes all the difference. 
 One may know all about the situation, the geol- 
 ogy, the history, the fauna, the flora, the climate, 
 the population, the industries, even the laws and 
 customs of a place, and still miss entirely its 
 personality — just as photographs, and letters, 
 and the descriptions of a third person, cannot 
 transfer the real presence of an individual. This 
 something, which explains how this vast Empire 
 of jarring interests works at all, is this people's 
 genius for politics and for governing, for con- 
 ciliation and compromise. They do get on 
 somehow, there is no denying that, and thus far 
 they have got on remarkably well. I think their 
 passion for personal freedom has made them 
 chary of treading on one another's toes, has made 
 the give and take of living together a science, an 
 intuitive possesion of all of them, from the highest 
 to the lowest. Each one realizes that he cannot 
 have his place without leaving the other fellow 
 in peace in his place. The philosophy of social 
 convenience, though perhaps not a high phase 
 
92 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of social economics, is, they feel, a comfortable 
 working hypothesis. 
 
 It is dijBScult with such a people to discover 
 what are their ideals, what are their real likes and 
 dislikes, what they spend themselves for most 
 willingly. The word "spend" may help us. 
 Some of our expenditures may be simply silly, 
 may have no significance. Benjamin Franklin 
 tells us that he first learned economy when he 
 discovered that he had paid too much for a 
 whistle. Robert Louis Stevenson comments upon 
 this by saying that what annoyed him in life 
 was not that he sometimes paid too much for a 
 whistle, but that he often found himself the pur- 
 chaser of a whistle that he did not want at all. 
 But when we find an individual, or a nation, 
 spending large sums persistently for this or that 
 we cannot be wrong in supposing that here at 
 last is a key to character. A man who year after 
 year spends largely for vintage wines and delicate 
 edibles can hardly make us believe that he is an 
 ascetic. Money is the blood of the body domes- 
 tic and the body politic. The individual may 
 claim for himself what virtues he will, the nation 
 may assume to possess such high qualities as it 
 will, but when one discovers how a household, or 
 a nation, spends its money, one has something 
 tangible to hang guesses at character upon. 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 93 
 
 Even at the risk of wearying the reader, let 
 us repeat some facts and figures as to the make- 
 up of the population of England and Wales. It 
 is composed of 15,728,613 males and 16,799,230 
 females, or a total population of 32,527,843. 
 Unlike our population, it is to an extraordinary 
 extent homogeneous. There are only 247,758 
 foreigners in all amongst them. Of these for- 
 eigners some 82,000 come from Russia and 
 Russian Poland, 49,000 come from Germany, 
 20,000 from France, 20,000 from Italy, and 
 something over 16,000 from the United States of 
 America. London alone has a population of 
 7,113,561 (1906). Roughly divided into classes, 
 the bulk of this population is made up as follows : 
 
 Professional Classes 
 Domestic Servants 
 Commercial 
 
 Agricultural and Fishing 
 Industrial .... 
 Unoccupied . . 
 
 MALE FEMALE TOTAL 
 
 651,543 321,142 972,685 
 
 304,195 1,690,722 1,994,917 
 
 1,779,685 78,769 1,858,454 
 
 1,094,765 57,730 1,152,495 
 
 6,326,788 2,023,388 8,350,176 
 
 1,977,283 9,017,884 10,995,167 
 
 In 1901, seventy-seven per cent, of the popula- 
 tion was urban, and twenty-three per cent, rural. 
 They are a pious people, or lay claim to be. 
 There are some 28,000 clergymen of the Church 
 of England, and about the same number of 
 priests, nuns, preachers, ministers, and lay- 
 
94 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 readers, or about one for every fifty-eight men, 
 women and children in the island. All along 
 their coast men and women are forbidden to go 
 in bathing together, and a man may not accom- 
 pany his own wife into the water. In the great 
 city of London everything closes at a half hour 
 after midnight, and you are driven from the 
 restaurants and cafes into the street. On the 
 other hand, England in a fit of mawkish prudery 
 rescinded the Contagious Diseases Act, and hun- 
 dreds of her soldiers and sailors are always in 
 hospital as a consequence; and London streets 
 are free day and night to perambulating disease, 
 which bedizens itself with baits for the unwary. 
 The other day a workman's widow and children 
 were virtually deprived of any real compensation, 
 under the Workmen's Compensation Act of 
 1906, by being obliged to share it with a number 
 of his real, or supposed, illegitimate children. 
 
 There is now under discussion (1908) in Parlia- 
 ment a new Licensing Act. On the first of Jan- 
 uary, 1908, there were in England and Wales 
 95,700 licenses, or 27.62 per 10,000 of the total 
 population. It would seem fair enough, in all 
 conscience, to decrease this number, even though 
 certain vested interests in the beer and liquor 
 trade lost some revenue by the operation. One 
 would think that at least the bishops and clergy 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 95 
 
 would be unanimous in favor of such a bill. 
 Not at all. They are divided and one bishop at 
 least, there may be others, has already written a 
 letter denouncing the bill on the ground that 
 investors in brewery shares would lose by the 
 passage of the bill. Apparently even the spirit- 
 ual lords of the church cannot overcome the 
 national obsession of keeping the main chance 
 ever in view. This bishop holds with Frederick 
 the Great that: "Hier muss ein jeder nach 
 seiner Fa9on selig werden." 
 
 If a brewer, when he sells enough beer, is made 
 a peer, no wonder the average bishop is confused, 
 and concludes, as do all Englishmen, that Doctor 
 Johnson was right when he said that "there are 
 few ways in which a man can be more innocently 
 employed than in getting money." They spend 
 four pounds sterling per head for drink, or some 
 $750,000,000 a year, and in the year 1906-7 
 the navy cost $157,170,000. The revenue de- 
 rived from excise taxes, exclusive of additional 
 beer and spirit duties, collected for local authori- 
 ties is $151,750,000 (1906-7). In 1906 these 
 people drank 1,223,187,000 imperial gallons of 
 beer, or 28 gallons each, for every man, woman 
 and child, including the teetotalers. In addition 
 they drank 39,264,000 gallons of spirits, and 
 13,278,000 gallons of wine; not to mention that 
 
96 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 they used 269,503,000 pounds of tea, or a little 
 over six pounds per head. 
 
 The statement made in a previous page, that 
 this Christian country spends its money for drink, 
 sport and war, now proves to be not malicious, or 
 even harsh, it is merely true ; for during the last 
 year (1906-7) they spent the colossal sum of 
 considerably over a thousand million dollars for 
 drink, sport, and the navy, while the total na- 
 tional expenditure for the same year was $697,- 
 076,250, which is much less than was spent for 
 drink alone ! As an offset to this, there is a State 
 Church, worth in its own right over $500,000,000, 
 and toward the support of which Mr. John Bull 
 contributes some $36,000,000 a year. This little 
 kingdom of 121,115 square miles, with a popu- 
 lation of only forty-odd millions, controlling pos- 
 sessions aggregating over 9,000,000 square miles, 
 and a population of over 400,000,000, carries in 
 addition, the burden of over 1,000,000 persons 
 enrolled as paupers; is taxed to the amount 
 of $75,000,000 a year for their support, and 
 spends nearly $20,000,000 a year under the 
 general head of Law and Justice to keep her 
 population in order. When, in addition to these 
 expenditures, it is recalled that John Bull has a 
 national debt now standing at $3,870,823,520 
 gross, $3,655,817,090 net; on which he pays 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 97 
 
 interest annually to the amount of $142,500,000, 
 the wonder of the student of his affairs grows 
 apace. For these are nice round sums for any 
 nation to spend, no matter how rich, when it is 
 remembered that they are expenditures which 
 are in no sense productive. 
 
 Drink $750,000,000 
 
 Sport 220,000,000 
 
 Navy 157,000,000 
 
 Paupers 75,000,000 
 
 Interest National Debt 142,000,000 
 
 $1,344,000,000 
 
 Estimating the population at 40,000,000, these 
 figures mean an annual expenditure of $366 per 
 head for every man, woman and child on whistles 
 that they ought not to want, at any rate in such 
 profusion as this. Indeed this is proved beyond 
 perad venture by the fact that 361 out of every 
 400 of the population die leaving less than $1,500. 
 Much as we may believe in the wholesomeness of 
 a sound glass of wine, firmly, as I personally, at 
 least, believe in the value of sport, one cannot 
 bring oneself to accept such prodigal expendi- 
 tures as these as necessary. It is a question 
 indeed if they be not actually criminal, and 
 bound ere long to bring disaster. 
 
 Besides these expenditures there have arisen in 
 the last few years a number of local bodies which 
 
98 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 are empowered to borrow and spend. The local 
 debt in England and Wales in the last thirty 
 years has risen from $460,000,000 to over $2,250,- 
 000,000. The expenditures of local bodies in the 
 last twenty years have risen from $275,000,000 to 
 $700,000,000, indeed the local bodies in England 
 and Wales are spending more each year than the 
 Imperial Government of the United Kingdom. 
 The national net expenditure in 1870 was 
 $308,373,880; in 1890 it was $396,662,605; in 
 1900 it was $643,170,720; and in 1907, $657,- 
 731,250. The national expenditure has more 
 than doubled since 1870, and has risen 50 per 
 cent, in a dozen years. The principal items of 
 increase are: 
 
 NATIONAL AEMY AND 
 
 DEBT SERVICE NAVY 
 
 1870 $134,922,655 $113,742,275 
 
 1907 158,090,460 285,772,880 
 
 ELEMENTARY CIVIL 
 
 EDUCATION SERVICE 
 
 1870 $ 6,029,540 $29,724,585 
 
 1907 77,137,230 46,996,895 
 
 These vast increases matter not at all if the 
 national wealth and prosperity increase at the 
 same ratio, but what is the answer to that ques- 
 tion ? It is an answer full of peril for England. 
 Income, subject to income tax, in Great Britain 
 in 1892, amounted to $2,685,756,000; in 1905 it 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 99 
 
 amounted to $3,096,640,485; an increase of only 
 $410,884,485. The income subject to income 
 tax in Prussia increased in those same years from 
 $1,490,349,405 to $2,505,205,115. There is no 
 German income tax, and these are merely the 
 figures for Prussia. There should be added, there- 
 fore, about 50 per cent, for the whole of Ger- 
 many. British income subject to tax has in- 
 creased 15 per cent., while in Germany it has 
 increased 60 per cent. British savings banks 
 deposits from 1901 to 1907 increased $85,000 000; 
 while German savings banks deposits increased 
 $860,000,000 during the same period. 
 
 Figures are of small value as dry bones, but 
 clothed in flesh and blood they become personal- 
 ities. These few figures mean that England's 
 wealth has increased by no more than the popu- 
 lation, it has remained stationary in short; 
 while in the rival country, Germany, it has in- 
 creased by 60 per cent. British expenditure must 
 go on increasing for army, navy, and educa- 
 tion, if for no other reason than as a defence 
 against war and commercial invasion. These 
 figures therefore present a problem that cannot 
 be laughed away. If the income tax and death 
 duties are to be increased, then capital, which is 
 the very blood of increased commercial and 
 industrial prosperity, is gradually thinned and 
 
100 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 weakened. I have the good authority of an 
 eminent Enghsh jfinancier for stating that the 
 Enghsh income from foreign investments is cal- 
 culated to be $450,000,000 a year; and that for- 
 eigners pay the English for carriage of freight 
 about the same amount annually, but even this 
 fine total of $900,000,000 income is not com- 
 pensating England for the surpassing onrush of 
 prosperity in America and Germany. As we 
 have said before, not to go ahead is to fall behind, 
 and England for the first time in her history is 
 falling behind. 
 
 This enormous income from foreign invest- 
 ments too is a bad rather than a good sign, since 
 it means that English capital is drifting away 
 from use in England, and for the employment of 
 English labor, to assist in the development of 
 rival industries in foreign lands. 
 
 There must needs be colossal strength and 
 pluck, marvellous financial elasticity, unbounded 
 confidence, tremendous earning power, and a 
 vast reservoir of national virtue somewhere, to 
 explain these huge incongruities. One begins to 
 understand the reasons for the nonchalant self- 
 satisfaction of the English, which Germans, 
 Frenchmen, Americans, and others, are fain to 
 call conceit, or obstinacy, or stupidity, as the 
 occasion demands. 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 101 
 
 One may note just here the curious fiction that 
 England is the land of free food, a fiction, but 
 firmly believed both at home and abroad by the 
 uninformed. As a matter of fact the receipts 
 from customs duties upon the things that the 
 English eat, drink, and smoke, plus the excise 
 taxation of them, make together much the largest 
 item of the Imperial revenue of the United 
 Kingdom. Let us look at the figures. For the 
 ten years ending March 31, 1898-1907: 
 
 NET BECEIPTS FROM CUSTOMS 
 
 Tobacco and Snuff $608,500,000 
 
 Tea 289,000,000 
 
 Spirits 218,000,000 
 
 Sugar (last six years only) 175,500,000 
 
 Wine 69,500,000 
 
 Currants, etc., 21,000,000 
 
 Corn and Grain (two years only) 12,000,000 
 
 Coffee 9,000,000 
 
 Total $1,402,500,000 
 
 NET RECEIPTS FROM EXCISE 
 
 Spirits $884,500,000 
 
 Beer 629,500,000 
 
 Total Net Receipts from Customs and Excise $2,916,500,000 
 
 This works out at an average of $291,650,000 
 yearly, or at $5,605,000 weekly, or at the rate of 
 $690 yearly per 100 of the population during the 
 
102 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 last ten years. When it becomes thus apparent 
 that the English are taxed for what they eat, 
 drink, and smoke at the rate of over $5,000,000 a 
 week, the fiction of free food is blown to the 
 winds, and the Land of Compromises rejoices 
 in the possession of yet another strange contra- 
 diction which troubles nobody, and which is still 
 used by politician and layman alike as though 
 this at least were one of the fundamental truths 
 of their insular social economy. 
 
 These brief glimpses of the expenditures, bur- 
 dens and responsibilities of Mr. Bull explain why 
 that gentleman's portrait shows a broad, red- 
 faced, big-waisted, heavy-shouldered, piano- 
 legged countryman, with a bulldog at his heels. 
 Note the bulldog! The characteristics of the 
 bulldog are that he is slow to anger, but once he 
 takes hold he never lets go till you break his 
 jaws or scald him nearly to death with boiling 
 water. 
 
 Only a slow man, a safe man, a man without 
 nerves, who can eat and drink copiously, and 
 sleep dreamlessly, and shake off annoyances 
 easily, can keep his place in the world with such 
 burdens upon his shoulders. And when we look 
 a bit further into his house-keeping accounts we 
 find this to be the case. He spends some 
 $380,000,000 a year for bread. In 1906 he used 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 103 
 
 267,022,000 bushels of wheat, and wheat prod- 
 ucts, or 6.12 bushels per head; $190,000,000 for 
 butter and cheese; $405,000,000 for milk, sugar, 
 tea, coffee and cocoa, and he washes these down, 
 and some millions of tons of beef, mutton, pork 
 rice, potatoes besides, with heavy malt liquors, 
 brandy, gin, whiskey, and wine, which cost 
 him $750,000,000 a year. And everywhere, 
 from highest to lowest, the wastefulness and 
 the bad cooking, and the spoiling of good 
 materials, go on apace, to the astonishment 
 and horror of every Continental who visits Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Mr. Bull is apparently not greatly disturbed 
 by these significant figures. Here and there a 
 voice is raised to protest or to warn, but the voice 
 of the professionally patriotic politician is always 
 louder in denial. The political Cleopatra is 
 always ready to put a broiled fish on the pop- 
 ulace Antony's hook. Who could have made 
 a French statesman at the end of the reign 
 of Louis the Fourteenth believe that within 
 an hundred years France would be in the fi- 
 nancial gutter, begging for a loan from Messrs. 
 Baring, and Labouchere in London! Who 
 would dare whisper such a thing in regard to 
 England to-day, lest he be laughed out of 
 court! 
 
104 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 On the contrary, England is the most hopeful 
 of all the nations. There is less political pessi- 
 mism than in France, Germany, Russia, Italy, or 
 even in America. There is less of that fatigued 
 way of looking at things here than in the rest of 
 Europe. Compare the speeches delivered in and 
 out of Parliament by politicians big and little, 
 with the speeches of politicians delivered else- 
 where at this moment in the world and one is 
 impressed first of all by their healthier tone. 
 Every now and again in Germany, in France, and 
 in America, there is an undertone of discourage- 
 ment, of despair, as of men whose nerves had 
 collapsed and left them peevish. Though the 
 problems here are faced as courageously and dis- 
 cussed as frankly as elsewhere, there is no 
 throwing up of hands in despair, no dyspeptic 
 politics to put it briefly. The men in control, 
 I judge from the look of them, are men who eat, 
 and drink, and sleep, and play more than the 
 men of other nations, and their nerves are not so 
 close to the surface. They remain youthful 
 longer than we do. 
 
 A quicker, more sensitive, less easy-going, less 
 good-natured individual than John Bull would 
 be goaded into extreme measures by some of the 
 precedent-supported blundering in his political 
 and economic household. The moment one in- 
 
THE^LAND OF COMPROMISE 105 
 
 vestigates the poor-laws, the ecclesiastical system, 
 the school arrangements, — now in a worse tangle 
 than ever — ^the method of administering justice, 
 one is forced to admire the rough optimism which 
 can submit good-humoredly to the awkwardness 
 of methods which are retained merely because 
 they are the methods of the forefathers. Factory 
 hands, small farmers, clerks, shop-keepers, labor- 
 ers, farm hands, employes in factories, mines, 
 and other industries, even in the country towns 
 where there is no excuse for crowding, live in 
 small, badly arranged, and badly ventilated 
 houses, with no conveniences; such as hardly 
 exist in either the city or the country districts of 
 America. 
 
 In the time of Henry the Eighth, one-fifth of 
 all the land in England was in the possession of 
 the church. Much of it was then, and has been 
 since then, distributed by royal favor and royal 
 grants. Go where one will in England, even 
 to-day, and upon questioning the inhabitants of 
 this town or that as regards the ownership of the 
 land, one finds that a very few people are in pos- 
 session of all the land, and not only the farmers 
 but the townspeople themselves are their tenants. 
 These landlords have inherited, or purchased, 
 these large holdings, first, because in years gone 
 by land rents paid well, and, secondly, because 
 
106 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 peculiar social advantages and certain definite 
 political preferences, as well as direct political 
 influence over the tenants, went with, and still go 
 with, the land. Men who make a fortune almost 
 without exception invest a part of it in country 
 estates, and lay the foundations for social and 
 political power in this or that county. Many 
 of England's large landowners to-day are com- 
 paratively new people of this type. So far as 
 this matter of land is concerned, it is a burning 
 question in Ireland, in Scotland, and in England 
 at this very day. The great, very great, majority 
 of Englishmen have not a square foot of land they 
 may call their own, they are tenants, and they 
 pay $500,000,000 a year rent divided as follows: 
 
 From Farm Lands $175,000,000 
 
 " Lands Bearing Dwelling-Houses, Factories, 
 
 Business Premises, etc 255,000,000 
 
 " Sporting Rents, etc., 5,000,000 
 
 Mines, Quarries, etc., 35,000,000 
 
 Other Property 30,000,000 
 
 This fact becomes the more clear, and one may 
 add the more lugubrious, when we know that the 
 whole area of the United Kingdom measures 
 77,000,000 acres, and nearly 77,000,000 are 
 in the hands of a comparatively small number 
 of owners. 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 107 
 
 For England and Wales alone the figures are 
 as follows: 
 
 NUMBEK 
 OF OWNEHa 
 
 400 , 
 
 1,288 . 
 
 2,529 . 
 
 9,585 . 
 
 24,412 . 
 
 217,049 . 
 
 703,289 . 
 
 14,459 . 
 
 CLASS OF OWNEE8 ACHES 
 
 Peers and Peeresses 5,729,979 
 
 Great Landowners 8,497,699 
 
 Squires 4,319,271 
 
 Greater Yeomen 4,782,627 
 
 Lesser Yeomen 4,144,272 
 
 Small Proprietors 3,931,806 
 
 Cottagers 151,148 
 
 Public Bodies 1,443,548 
 
 Waste Land 1,524,624 
 
 In short, more than half the area of England 
 and Wales is owned by a few thousand people. 
 Of the 77,000,000 acres, 40,426,900, or more than 
 one-half, are owned by 2,500 persons, and 38,200 
 persons own three-fourths of the total land area 
 of England and Wales. 
 
 That this arrangement is not satisfactory goes 
 without saying, and various legislative measures 
 are proposed, some of which are now under dis- 
 cussion in Parliament, to remedy this injustice. 
 In France the rural population is 65 per cent, and 
 the urban population 35 per cent. In Great 
 Britain the census returns for 1891 showed that 
 71.7 per cent, of the population was urban and 
 28.3 per cent, rural, while in 1901 the drift 
 from the land had still further increased, 77 per 
 
108 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 cent, of the population being classed as urban 
 and only 23 per cent, rural. 
 
 After Henry the Eighth had deprived the 
 monasteries and the high church dignitaries of 
 their land, land became plentiful. Vast tracts of 
 ground were thrown open to the acquisition of 
 lay proprietors. Indeed these released estates 
 in the days of Queen Elizabeth were so plentiful 
 that an act was passed obliging every man who 
 built a cottage to "lay four acres of land thereto." 
 The cottager thus was forced by law to become 
 a small farmer, and as we have seen in other 
 chapters these small farmers were the defence 
 of England. It is hard to believe that such a 
 state of things, as regards the land, ever existed, 
 when we see how to-day the land is back again 
 in the hands of a very few owners. 
 
 Thus it is seen that the first, fundamental, and 
 unavoidable payment by an Englishman is 
 always for rent. In addition to this, with great 
 good nature, he submits to the most ridiculous 
 poor law in the world, a compound of socialism, 
 sentimental philanthropy, and outgrown custom, 
 by which he is taxed enormously for the support 
 of the poor. 
 
 Up to 1834 the matter of poor law relief had 
 been going from bad to worse, until at last the 
 land was taxed so heavily for the support of the 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 109 
 
 poor, who of course increase exactly in proportion 
 to the relief offered, not only in England but 
 everywhere else as well, that the farmers could 
 not afford to cultivate it. Then came a change 
 and a gradual remodelling of legislation. 
 
 
 POPULATION 
 
 PAUPEES 
 
 EXPENDITURES 
 
 In 1841 . 
 
 . 15,914,148 
 
 1,299,048 
 
 $23,804,645 
 
 " 1851 . 
 
 . 17,927,609 
 
 941,315 
 
 24,813,520 
 
 " 1861 . 
 
 . 20,066,224 
 
 883,921 
 
 28,894,715 
 
 " 1871 . 
 
 . 22,712,266 
 
 1,037,360 
 
 39,433,620 
 
 " 1881 . 
 
 . 25,974,439 
 
 773,198 
 
 40,075,050 
 
 " 1891 . 
 
 . 29,002,525 
 
 728,042 
 
 43,216,590 
 
 " 1901 . 
 
 . 32,527,843 
 
 778,084 
 
 57,744,425 
 
 Y 
 
 The total number of paupers receiving relief 
 on January the first, 1907, was 920,838, while the ^ 
 total cost of relief of the poor for the fiscal year 
 1906 was $70,251,310. 
 
 These sums of money are, it must not be for- 
 gotten, quite outside the enormous sums ex- 
 pended in private charities. The city of London 
 alone, it is calculated, contributes more than 
 $25,000,000 a year in private charity, and the 
 various temperance societies also, and they are a 
 drop in the bucket among charities, spend every 
 year an amount represented by a capital of 
 $12,000,000, in a rather Liliputian attempt to 
 prevent the Brobdignagian British giant from 
 lifting his costly $750,000,000 drinking cup to his 
 
110 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 lips. Only the rich man can own land in a 
 country where thirty-two million people spend 
 such sums for drink and over seventy million 
 dollars a year for the official relief, and almost as 
 much more for the private care, of their shirkers, 
 incompetents, and helpless ; and where land itself 
 cannot be bought at its agricultural or productive 
 value, but must be paid for at the artificial valua- 
 tion that it has acquired through this feudalistic 
 desire on the part of rich men to become great 
 landowners. 
 
 When one hears, and one does hear it on every 
 hand just now, how poor are Englishmen, one 
 has in this land question some explanation of the 
 secret. It is not only a material and mechan- 
 ical change that has taken place but a spiritual 
 change. Democracy under one name or another 
 is in the air just now. Men can have land, and 
 liberty; that has been proved. And many more 
 men want it. The tenants on large estates 
 fifty years ago were, to all practical intents and 
 purposes, political and economic slaves, and to 
 some extent they are slaves still. They find more 
 rights and more freedom in the cities, and they 
 flock thither; and it is this combination of de- 
 mocracy and landholding by a few that has 
 so radically changed the grouping of the pop- 
 ulation of Great Britain, till now 77 per cent. 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 111 
 
 live in cities, and only 23 per cent, in the 
 country. 
 
 Whether as a result of this or no the birth 
 rate has been steadily decreasing, until 1907 
 showed the lowest birth rate on record. Pauper- 
 ism increases, the deportation of men increases, 
 expenditure for drink increases, expenditures 
 national and local increase, while the national 
 wealth remains at a standstill, and the birth rate 
 decreases. 
 
 One is led naturally enough to inquire what 
 the church, with its bishops in the House of 
 Lords, and its twenty-eight thousand clergy, is 
 doing to modify, or even to influence, this condi- 
 tion of affairs. Here again, one is surprised to 
 find only conciliation, compromise, and optimism 
 at work. Even in the realm of spiritual and 
 ethical things, the immediately feasible is the 
 watchword. The land question is an important 
 factor in all ecclesiastical problems to begin with, 
 since the church is a landowner, and because the 
 ecclesiastical system includes as many incongru- 
 ities and contradictions as can well be imagined. 
 It has been said of it that it has a Catholic ritual, 
 a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy, 
 which is true enough for a witticism. A more 
 savage criticism is that of Jowett, who, writing to 
 Caird, said: "In another ten years half the 
 
112 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 English clergy will be given up to a fetish priest- 
 worship of the Sacrament." This prophecy has 
 come true to a sufficient extent at least to cause 
 grave trouble. The Church of England holds 
 fast to the three orders of the clergy, to tactual 
 succession, and, until recently when an act of 
 Parliament made it possible for a clergyman to 
 become again a layman, to the indelibility of its 
 ordinations. And yet the two archbishops, and 
 all the bishops, are practically appointed by the 
 Prime Minister, who may be, as we have seen, a 
 Jew, a Unitarian, or an Agnostic. 
 
 In the United States of America one church 
 differs from another only in being a little better 
 than any other. The men and women of each 
 congregation control the church property, the 
 minister, alas, being all too often considered as 
 church property as well, and choose their own 
 minister. Even in the American Episcopal 
 Church, any particular bishop would find it 
 difficult to interfere successfully with any particu- 
 lar congregation's choice of a rector. There is, 
 too, in too many of these congregations, a notice- 
 able, not to say very remarkable alliance between 
 wealth and goodness, since the church officers are 
 almost invariably the wealthier men in the 
 congregation. 
 
 The American notion of a church as a club, or 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 113 
 
 as a social ladder, does not obtain in England, 
 except that there is perhaps a tendency on the 
 part of men grown rich to leave the dissenters' 
 chapel for the more aristocratic ministrations of 
 the church. Why a man or woman who enters 
 a church to worship God should be warmly 
 greeted and, later on, gradually entertained so- 
 cially, as though this were a usual quality and man- 
 ifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven, a preva- 
 lent notion in America, has not as yet dawned 
 upon these dull English people. That a woman 
 should seek social recognition through member- 
 ship in the altar-guild; or worship in and serve 
 the parish, with an eye to dinners and dances ; 
 or that a man should be ostentatiously deeply, 
 darkly blue in his orthodoxy, and at the same 
 time peddle bonds that he knows to be of easy 
 financial virtue amongst his friends, is a refine- 
 ment of ecclesiastical-social diplomacy to which 
 they have not attained. 
 
 Mr. John Bull says his prayers under totally 
 different auspices. The majority of the churches 
 of England are private property. When a large 
 estate is purchased, the parish church or churches 
 go with the other property. The landlord, or the 
 patron of the livings, as he is called with refer- 
 ence to his relations to his church property, 
 chooses the clergyman for every parish on his 
 
114 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 property, and sees to it that the revenue attaching 
 thereto goes to him. He can sell this church 
 living or let it to whom he will, and although 
 each incumbent is put over the parish for life, 
 at his death the patron may again bestow it upon 
 some one else. So secure was this tenure of the 
 parson in his parish that it is only recently that 
 an act of Parliament permitted his dismissal, 
 even for drunkenness or debt. 
 
 The people of a parish have well-defined rights 
 to the services of the parson, to sittings in the 
 church, to burial in the churchyard, and to the 
 sacraments, but to little more. George William 
 Thomas Brudenell Bruce, fourth Marquis of 
 Ailesbury, who died some years ago, was the 
 patron of nine such livings. He married a girl 
 of unexceptionable immorality from the variety 
 stage, was part owner of several music halls, and 
 added to his notoriety by being ruled off every 
 race-track in England, as a cheat and a black- 
 guard. There is always a large number of these 
 livings for sale, which are advertised just as are 
 other investments. A wealthy man's daughter 
 marries a clergyman, and the father, if he be of 
 the right sort, purchases one of these livings and 
 presents it as a wedding gift. In families where 
 there are one or more of these livings, one of the 
 sons becomes a clergyman, just to keep that much 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 115 
 
 income in the family. A clergyman with capital 
 at his disposal, invests some of it in such a pur- 
 chase, and enjoys the income thereof, and an 
 agreeable way of exercising his professional 
 energies, at the same time. Younger sons were 
 wont to take to this profession, and with reason, 
 since it is the only one in which a man may retain 
 all the prerogatives and privileges of a gentleman, 
 and have all the amenities of social courtesy 
 shown him, without the possession or expenditure 
 of money. 
 
 On finding out this much about the State 
 Church of England, one expects to find one thing, 
 and finds quite another. Again, somehow, the 
 machinery works. In the city, and in the country 
 districts as well, these men are the dullest men 
 in the pulpit, and the most companionable men 
 out of it, to be found anywhere. They work 
 hard and conscientiously, most of them, and are, 
 as a rule, popular, very often indeed the most 
 popular, and with the greatest influence for good 
 in their several communities. The demand for 
 the disestablishment of the church is seldom 
 bolstered by any argument now-a-days from the 
 laxness or incompetence of the clergy. The 
 demand is based rather upon such arguments as 
 these : that the State should represent the whole 
 people in religious as in other matters; that 
 
116 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Parliament is not a fit body to deal with church 
 matters; that establishments obstruct political 
 and social reforms ; and that established churches 
 being subject to State control cannot possess a 
 certain necessary liberty of adaptation. 
 
 In the last quarter of a century the Established 
 Church has collected and spent an enormous 
 sum, estimated at some $450,000,000, in domestic 
 and foreign missions, in renovating old churches, 
 in establishing new ones, and in founding and 
 supporting institutions for carrying on the differ- 
 ent branches of its work. The church popula- 
 tion of England is estimated to be about half the 
 total population ; and whatever be the compara- 
 tive strength in numbers of the Established and 
 Dissenting Churches, there can be no question of 
 the superior influence of the 28,000 clergy of the 
 State Church. Whether the system be right or 
 wrong, these clergymen are, man for man, 
 stronger men than the dissenting ministers, and 
 not only in the palaces but in the slums also, 
 they wield a more constant control. In spite of 
 Ruskin's bitter comment: "Our national relig- 
 ion is the performance of church ceremonies and 
 preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep 
 the mob quietly at work while we amuse our- 
 selves," it must be admitted that to-day, either 
 because the fear of disestablishment stares them 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 117 
 
 in the face, or because attendance at church has 
 woefully decreased, while indifference and unbe- 
 lief have increased, the clergy are an energetic, 
 hard-working, and sincere body of men. 
 
 But what if they were a far greater power for 
 good than they are! What if they were not 
 divided among themselves as to ritual, exegesis, 
 and theology, as well as upon outside questions 
 of education, the licensing bill and other matters ! 
 They would even then be overwhelmed and lost 
 in the sea of troubles that confront them. They 
 are as a pitchfork against the sea. 
 
 Of what education is doing to palliate these 
 evils we have seen in another chapter, and it is 
 little enough. 
 
 Mr. Balfour, the late Prime Minister, says: 
 *'The existing educational system of this country 
 is chaotic, is ineffectual, is utterly behind the 
 age, makes us the laughing-stock of every ad- 
 vanced nation in Europe and America, puts us 
 behind, not only our American cousins, but the 
 German, and the Frenchman and the Italian." 
 
 The truth of the matter is that the whole 
 Imperial situation has so changed in the last 
 fifty years that the old makeshifts and compro- 
 mises no longer suflfice to meet the situation. 
 
 In 1860 the United States was on the verge of 
 a four years' struggle for national unity, and 
 
118 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 England was looking on, the majority of her 
 citizens believing that the end of the Republic was 
 in sight. Even Gladstone was an investor in 
 Confederate bonds. Germany was not even a 
 nation. Japan was known to the outside world 
 as a gentle, courteous people, still steeped in 
 feudalism and proficient in delicate iron and 
 enamel work. 
 
 What Englishman thought then that America 
 would produce so much steel and iron that she 
 could afford to undersell the Englishman at his 
 own door ? In those dark days what Englishman 
 dreamed that the Republic across the water 
 would produce 2,592,320,000 bushels of corn, or 
 78.8 of the world's total production; 634,087,000 
 bushels of wheat, or 20.7 of the world's entire 
 crop; 13,346,000 bales of cotton, or 71.3 of the 
 world's total; 25,780,000 tons of pig iron or 42.2 
 of the world's total; 162,600,000 barrels of 
 petroleum, or 62.5 of the total supply; 918,000,- 
 000 pounds of copper, or 57.5 of the total supply; 
 $89,620,000 of gold, or 22.1 of the world's total 
 output; and $37,914,000 of silver, or 35.5 of the 
 total; 298,859 tons of sulphur, or 35.8 of the 
 total; 455,000,000 tons of coal, or 37.3 of the 
 world's supply ? Since those days the United 
 States has grown portentously. With an area 
 of 5.9 of the world's, and a population of 5.2, we 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 119 
 
 supply 43 per cent, of the world's total produc- 
 tion of wheat, corn, and oats. We mine 35.5 per 
 cent, of the world's silver, 22.1 of the gold, and 
 have 21 per cent, of the cotton spindles. What 
 Englishman, with the Armada and Trafalgar in 
 mind, believed that Germany would build ship 
 for ship with him, and give him anxiety as to his 
 island's safety from her attack ? What English- 
 man dreamed that he would rejoice to see his 
 country the ally of pagan Japan, become a naval 
 power to be reckoned with ? 
 
 The world has changed, but he has changed 
 least of all. He has as little sympathy as ever 
 with the foreigner. He cannot see what these 
 changes mean. Even the one solution of the 
 problem right at hand, namely an Imperial 
 Federation, with a wise scheme of tarijff regula- 
 tions binding together his vast interests all over 
 the world, is made almost hopeless by his com- 
 placent condescension toward the colonials. Ask 
 the Canadian how he likes the Englishman, not 
 the politician, not the panderer who speaks for 
 publication, but the man in the street. I have 
 heard the answer an hundred times. I have 
 heard it in Cape Breton, and from there all the 
 way to Vancouver, and it is not reassuring. Ask 
 the Australian how he enjoys a visit to England, 
 and what hospitality he receives there. Ask the 
 
120 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 South African how he looks upon the Home 
 Government, which has handed him over to his 
 enemies again. He will probably tell you the 
 story of a certain husband's view of compromise. 
 He was complaining to a friend that he liked to 
 sleep between cotton sheets, but that his wife 
 preferred linen sheets. He found linen sheets 
 cold and disagreeable and they could not agree. 
 "What do you do about it, how do you arrange 
 matters," asked his friend. "Oh, we compro- 
 mise!" replied the husband; "we use linen 
 sheets!" 
 
 Oh, we'll compromise, says England to her 
 South African colonist, and hands him over to 
 the Boers. One hears vague tales, too, of Indian 
 princes, not talking for publication, who are 
 restless and dissatisfied, and of a semi-educated 
 Indian populace demanding some share in gov- 
 ernment. Of all follies, the worst is a system of 
 bringing these Indians to England, educating 
 them, entertaining them, letting them dance and 
 flirt with their women, permitting at least one of 
 them to marry an English lady, and then sending 
 them back to India to live in dependence, and as 
 the inferior of the least important British oflScial. 
 Is it any wonder that this compromise brings 
 anger and dissatisfaction ? 
 
 Close at home, it is the same easy compromise. 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 121 
 
 A palpable disproportion of Irish members in 
 the House of Commons, but servitude for Ire- 
 land. (The Irish point of view.) 
 
 A State Church, some of whose members and 
 leaders take sides with the brewers against tem- 
 perance reform. Years of wrangling between 
 Churchmen, Catholics, and Nonconformists over 
 the school question. 
 
 National unanimity in playing ostrich, and 
 burying their heads in the sand on the question of 
 England's continued commercial supremacy. 
 
 Always wide advertising of the fact that Eng- 
 land still leads in the volume and value of her 
 export and import trade over Germany, or the 
 United States, or other rivals, but no honest 
 analysis of the facts. 
 
 What boots it how fast England goes ahead, if 
 her rivals go ahead faster than she does ? What 
 a silly fellow we should dub the youth who 
 congratulates himself upon having grown so 
 much stronger, so much heavier, so much taller 
 in ten years, if all his rivals had during that time 
 grown even stronger, heavier and taller than he. 
 Between 1886 and 1906 Germany increased her 
 exports of manufactured goods $415,000,000. 
 During the same period England increased hers 
 $300,000,000. Far more important even than 
 that, Germany is keeping her men at work in her 
 
122 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 industries and on her soil. In 1894 Germany 
 exported 26 out of every 10,000, in 1907 she ex- 
 ported 4 out of every 10,000 men. In 1894 Eng- 
 land exported 9 out of every 10,000 men, in 1907 
 she exported 40 out of every 10,000 men. Be- 
 tween 1903 and 1907 the increase of men leaving 
 England for other countries was 61 per cent, and 
 unemployment was greater in 1907 than for ten 
 years previously. 
 
 It must be exasperating to the Germans to read 
 the English papers, which comment in sorrowful 
 tones upon Germany's debt, Germany's deficit, 
 and Germany's financial difficulties generally, in 
 a tone of aloofness and self-satisfaction. One 
 would suppose England had no debt, that Eng- 
 land's total export and import trade had not de- 
 creased during the one year 1908 by $570,000,000, 
 that England was not taxed to death, that Eng- 
 land was not drink mad. It is no concern of 
 ours. England is our play-ground, and the Eng- 
 lish our inexhaustible source of amusement, but 
 it is not to be wondered at that the Continent 
 wearies sometimes of England's constant sug- 
 gestions that she is not as others are. The tem- 
 ple of the world has echoed and re-echoed for 
 many years now with the Pharisee's prayer, and 
 the accent is unmistakably cockney. 
 
 Germany in the twenty years of the present 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 123 
 
 Emperor's reign has increased her population 
 from forty-eight millions to sixty-three millions. 
 A comparison between the three countries, Great 
 Britain, Germany, and the United States shows 
 the long strides the rivals of Great Britain are 
 making. 
 
 EXPOKTS 
 
 GT. B. GBK. V. B. 
 
 1890. In millions oi £ . . .263 158 176 
 
 1907. " " ... 426 342 370 
 
 Percentage of gain during period 62 116 110 
 
 IMPORTS 
 
 GT. B. 6EB. U. 8. 
 
 1890. In millions oi £ . . .420 224 164 
 
 1907. " « ... 645 477 286 
 
 Percentage of gain during period 53 113 74 
 
 MANUFACTURED EXPORTS 
 
 GT. B. GBR. U. S 
 
 1890. In millions oi £ . . .228 107 35 
 
 1907. « « ... 342 240 147 
 
 Percentage of gain during period 50 124 320 
 
 POPULATION 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN GERMANY UNITED STATES 
 
 1890 .... 37,400,000 49,400,000 62,600,000 
 1907 .... 44,000,000 62,300,000 88,000,000 
 (Jain .... 6,600,000 12,000,000 26,000,000 
 
 EMIGRATION 
 
 BRITISH GERMANY 
 
 1890 109,000 97,000 
 
 1907 235,000 31,600 
 
124 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 GBOSS RAILWAY RECEIPTS 
 
 
 
 GT. B. 
 
 GEB. 
 
 U. B. 
 
 1890. In millions of £ . 
 
 . 
 
 . 79.9 
 
 65.0 
 
 217 
 
 1907. 
 
 . 
 
 . 121.5 
 
 131.6 
 
 494 
 
 Percentage of increase 
 
 • 
 
 . 52 
 
 102 
 
 126 
 
 CONSUMPTION OF COAL 
 
 
 
 
 
 GT. B. 
 
 GEK. 
 
 U.S. 
 
 1890. In millions of tons 
 
 
 . 151 
 
 104 
 
 135 
 
 1907. 
 
 . 
 
 . 202 
 
 199 
 
 370 
 
 Percentage of increase 
 
 • 
 
 . 33 
 
 91 
 
 174 
 
 PRODUCTION 
 
 OF PIG IRON 
 
 
 
 
 
 GT. B. 
 
 GEK. 
 
 U. B. 
 
 1890. In millions of tons 
 
 . 
 
 . 7.9 
 
 4.6 
 
 9.2 
 
 1907. 
 
 . 
 
 . 10.1 
 
 12.6 
 
 25.7 
 
 Percentage of increase 
 
 • 
 
 . 27 
 
 174 
 
 179 
 
 SAVINGS 
 
 BANK DEPOSITS 
 
 
 
 
 
 GT. B. 
 
 GEB. 
 
 U.S. 
 
 1890. In millions of £ . 
 
 
 . 115 
 
 185 
 
 310 
 
 1907. 
 
 . 
 
 . 230 
 
 466 
 
 699 
 
 Percentage of increase 
 
 . 
 
 . 100 
 
 151 
 
 125 
 
 With this condition of affairs in plain view, one 
 party at least in the State is coquetting openly 
 with socialism. Old age pensions are now a fact 
 and free food for school children is under dis- 
 cussion. Five shillings a week for those seventy 
 years of age or over ! Why not sixty-three years 
 of age, why not fifty-five, why not Professor Os- 
 ier's limit of forty years of age ? Does anyone 
 suppose for a moment that the old fellows of 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 125 
 
 sixty-five will not be jealous of the old fellows of 
 seventy; and the old fellows of fifty-five of the 
 old fellows of sixty! Up to December 31, 1908, 
 the number of pensions actually granted was 
 596,038. Roughly speaking one person out of 
 every seventy is now in receipt of an old age 
 pension. Is human nature a different thing in this 
 island ? Will men save here who are being saved 
 for ? Will men work here when others must work 
 for them ? On the contrary, less here than in al- 
 most any other country. They are slow, stolid, 
 cold-blooded, and selfish. A fight, or drink, or 
 sport, these rouse them, but little else does. For 
 the last twenty years the only compromise with 
 the British workmen has been that of the rest of 
 the country sleeping between his sheets ! His sav- 
 ings bank deposits are only some $265,000,000, 
 and here it must be remembered that thousands 
 of people who do not belong in any sense to the 
 working classes use the savings banks for their 
 savings. It would take three times this amount 
 to pay his drink bill for one year. But nobody 
 dares take his cup away from him. Instead of 
 that it is proposed to promise him support in his 
 old age, so that he need not save at the public 
 house in the meanwhile. 
 
 This matter of old-age pensions is an insidi- 
 ously elastic form of outdoor relief, which will be 
 
126 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 stretched to suit the poHtical exigencies of the 
 hour, and a very enticing invitation to shiftless- 
 ness,to trust in God and let the powder get damp. 
 It is the beginning of the change of English 
 attitude from frank and free individualism to 
 the fashionable present-day effeminacy of State 
 support. 
 
 The important and the forbidding feature of 
 this new departure of State aid is not the fact 
 itself, or the method of working it out, or even the 
 consequences, but the cause. Why is such legis- 
 lation deemed necessary ? In a nutshell the 
 reason is this: The birth-rate is dropping as we 
 have noted elsewhere. The birth-rate which 
 twenty-five years ago was 36 is now 28 to 26 per 
 1,000. The effect of this is that the number of 
 the young has decreased in proportion to the 
 whole population; while the modern lengthening 
 of life has increased the proportion of the old. 
 The number of children under fifteen has de- 
 creased so rapidly in the last twenty-five years 
 that there are to-day 1,200,000 fewer in propor- 
 tion to the whole population, while the proportion 
 of the old to the total population, people over 
 sixty years, has increased in the same time by 
 500,000. In short the proportion of old people 
 has increased by half a million, while the propor- 
 tion of young people has decreased by nearly a 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 127 
 
 million and a quarter. This is a serious matter 
 anywhere, but to this manly and vigorous and 
 self-reliant race it is, unless remedied, the begin- 
 ning of the end. It is this aspect of the situation 
 which to the onlooker is much the most serious 
 feature of this new legislation of support by the 
 State. If the children are to be State educated, 
 and the aged to be State supported, and tariff 
 reform is to follow to enable those between 
 fifteen and sixty to make enough in forty-five 
 years to be able to take care of the unfortunate 
 young and the shiftless old as well as themselves, 
 the whole complexion of British life is bound to 
 change. Sturdy self-reliance, and common-sense, 
 and manly dealing with their own affairs and 
 the Imperial affairs so largely intrusted to 
 them, will, if they do not disappear, droop into 
 a tendency to lean upon the State — the State 
 which is after all here and everywhere the 
 phantom self of every man in it. Is the indi- 
 vidual less a man ? Then just so surely is the 
 State less to be respected. 
 
 What did all these things matter to England 
 fifty years ago, or even twenty-five years ago. 
 She had been unbeaten on land, or at sea, for as 
 long as a man's memory could go. She was so 
 easily first in shipping and commerce that there 
 was not only no rival, but no second, the rest of 
 
128 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the world was nowhere. Why not be generous 
 and conciHatory, why fash one's self about educa- 
 tion, the quarrels among the sects, the demands 
 of labor, the partition of the land, the drink 
 question, when there was so much and to spare ! 
 Compromise, smiling compromise if possible, 
 was easier, was more soothing to the nerves, and 
 was found to be the cheapest oil for the machinery 
 of State. But when everybody compromises, 
 from bishops to barmaids, somebody must be 
 paid some time, — yes, there is always the Devil 
 to pay! And now he is presenting his accounts 
 all round. "Disestablishment" is handed to the 
 bishops; "no more barmaids" is handed to the 
 barmaids; "reduction of the forces, and of pay" 
 is handed to the army; "unemployment" is 
 handed to the workman; and "increased taxes" 
 distributed liberally to everybody ; and ministers 
 of State themselves throw up their hands and 
 complain of the difficulty of riding the two horses 
 at once, "of economy and efficiency." If econo- 
 my had been ridden with firmer hands and a 
 more confident seat in the saddle, there would 
 have been no need of such a simian straddle 
 as that. Compromise loses any intellectual de- 
 fensibility, and becomes a term of the circus, 
 when it is thus used. Compromise which gives 
 as much liberty as safety permits to two opposing 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 129 
 
 factions, may have its political use ; but compro- 
 mise, powdered and painted, in tights and 
 spangles, kissing its hands to the mob, is a 
 contemptible thing. 
 
 We have seen how in church, in Parliament, in 
 expenditure and in governing, compromise has 
 been the offered solution. In the days of pros- 
 perity it may serve the purpose well enough, but 
 must there not be an end to its efficacy some 
 time ? 
 
 If we have learnt anything from this admirable 
 people, and this wonderful Empire, it has been 
 how much may be done by liberty loving men, 
 with the wealth and leisure to ensure courage, 
 patience and loyalty. We have watched their 
 history for a thousand years and more, in which 
 men have accepted their responsibilities, and 
 used their opportunities. We have seen how 
 neither opportunity nor responsibility has been 
 denied to any man. Any man may rise in church, 
 in State, or society. So much has ample freedom 
 done. Men made England, and kept her in- 
 violate. But now what a change! At the 
 hour of this writing practically every important 
 legislative movement is in some sort a plea and 
 a plan to soften men, to lesson their responsi- 
 bilities, and to make them feel that they need 
 not earn their opportunities. This may do in 
 
130 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 some Utopian kingdom of which I know noth- 
 ing, but it is death to the Saxon. Compromise 
 was well enough as long as it made it easier 
 to give freedom to a larger number; but com- 
 promise is disaster, where it locks up high prin- 
 ciple in a dark closet, and then goes fumbling 
 and grovelling for votes. At a time when over 
 32,000,000 of the population of the United King- 
 dom are dwellers in cities and towns ; this people, 
 who, more than all others, have won their victo- 
 ries and achieved their development on the land 
 and out of doors, it seems hardly the proper work 
 of far-seeing statesmanship to weaken them still 
 further by pandering to their own ignorant short- 
 cuts to salvation. 
 
 These reflections must not for a moment be 
 taken as malicious, or as seeking to give pain. 
 We are not dealing with a pat of butter, or a bit 
 of wood, or a handful of clay. There is good 
 metal here, and when one draws his picture on 
 copper, one must use steel and an acid. It 
 would be no compliment to the English people to 
 use the epicene style of ambassadorial compli- 
 ment. A clawless kitten is not more harmless or 
 more uninforming than a foreign ambassador at 
 a banquet. That is his business! But as be- 
 tween men, we all know that America does not 
 like England, and that Americans do not like the 
 
THE LAND OF COMPROMISE 131 
 
 English, but no intelligent American, no Amer- 
 ican indeed whose opinion is worth a fig, would 
 rejoice to see this nation, which has taught the 
 nations of the world the greatest lesson since 
 Christianity, and that is the lesson of law, and 
 order, and liberty, lose her grip. We, too, are of 
 the Saxon breed, diluted though the blood may 
 be, and we have our problems and our tasks, and 
 both would be made the harder should English 
 civilization prove a failure. Here, not long ago, 
 was the hardiest, the best trained, the most law- 
 abiding, and the freest people in the world, and 
 no American who loves his own country can 
 look on and see them emasculated with equa- 
 nimity or without trying to analyze the reasons 
 for such a change of attitude. 
 
 We have no faith in the philosophic socialism, 
 touched up with self-conscious oratory, which 
 governs France; none in the bureaucracy, guided 
 by Divine Right, which governs Germany; cer- 
 tainly none in the autocracy, perched upon 
 dynamite, which governs Russia. We believe 
 that a people can be taught self-government, 
 though the weak point in all democracies is that 
 there is nothing the people distrust so much as 
 the people. In England that weakness has been 
 partially eliminated by their method of choosing 
 as a rule their leaders and their legislators from 
 
132 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 a class whose independence has been a safeguard 
 against corruption, or intimidation. Their gov- 
 erning has been a success, because it has been a 
 friendly deference to a consensus of the compe- 
 tent created by themselves. No American wishes 
 to see that solution of government, of all by the 
 best, chosen in free and open competition, fail. 
 
IV 
 
 ENGLISH HOME LIFE 
 
 ON entering an Englishman's house the 
 first thing one notices is how well his 
 house is adapted to him. It seems to 
 have grown up around him, as in so many cases 
 it has, and to have taken on the folds of his 
 character, as a coat often worn moulds itself to 
 the figure of its owner. On entering an Amer- 
 ican's house, the first thing one notices is how 
 well he adapts himself to his house. 
 
 In England, the establishment is carried on 
 with a prime view to the comfort of the man, and 
 this applies to rich and poor alike and to all con- 
 ditions of society. In America the establishment 
 is carried on with a prime view to the comfort and 
 the exigencies of the woman. Men are more 
 selfish than women, consequently the English 
 home is, as a rule, at any rate from a man's point 
 of view, more comfortable than the American 
 home; barring of course our innumerable 
 mechanical contrivances for heating, bathing, 
 
 133 
 
 r 
 
134 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ventilation, cooking and so on, of which even 
 now, not only the average English house is quite 
 barren, but also the houses of the wealthy, both 
 in town and country. But here again it is the 
 woman and the servants who keep house who 
 suffer, not the man. 
 
 Men demand more, and receive more for their 
 money than do women, hence it is likely to follow 
 that a man's house, while it will be less attractive 
 aesthetically, will be more carefully furnished 
 with an eye to creature comforts than that of a 
 woman. 
 
 An Englishman is more at home in his own 
 house than an American, first because he is by 
 all the inmates recognized as the absolute master 
 there, and because he spends more of his time 
 there. He leaves it later in the morning, returns 
 to it earlier in the day, and gives more of himself 
 to it than does an American. An Englishman is 
 continually going home, an American is continu- 
 ally going to business. Ages of social laws, and 
 vast accretions of social distinctions have made 
 the Englishman who can stay at home more im- 
 portant than the Englishman who must go to 
 business; consequently, all Englishmen assume 
 that they are much at home, and little at business, 
 whether they are or not, for by so doing they 
 loom larger on the social horizon. 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 135 
 
 The Englishman is forever planning and 
 scheming to get home, and to stay at home, and 
 to enjoy the privileges of his home; while the 
 American is more apt to devote his energies to 
 make his business a place to go to, and in which 
 to spend himself. Here again the social lever 
 plays its part, for in America a man is the more 
 distinguished from his fellows the more business 
 he has on his hands, and he, too, assumes a busy- 
 ness sometimes out of proportion to the reality. 
 
 These minor details of domestic life put their 
 impress upon larger matters of business and 
 politics. It would be worthy of remark should 
 a party leader in Congress attack his opponents 
 on the ground that a Saturday session prevented 
 him and his followers from spending two days a 
 week at home. But it is a matter of course in 
 the English Parliament that Mr. Balfour should 
 object strenuously to a plan for a Saturday's sit- 
 ting which debars Englishmen from Saturday 
 and Sunday at their own firesides; or from the 
 pursuit of their favorite outdoor pleasures. 
 Whether time shall be given members of Parlia- 
 ment to go out to dine at leisure, no matter what 
 bill is before the house, assumes dimensions of 
 grave political importance. But a bitter attack 
 in the American Congress on the topic of the 
 dinner hour would scarcely be listened to, and 
 
136 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 would certainly relegate its champion to the 
 realms of crankdom and ridicule. So, too, any 
 uneasiness on the part of legislators lest they 
 should not get away to the country for the grouse 
 shooting, a common enough failing in England, is 
 so far beyond reasonable probability in America 
 that it is impossible to characterize what would 
 happen to an agitator on such a subject. 
 
 Americans staying any time in England, 
 whether men or women, are impressed by the fact 
 that it is the country of men. Likewise the Eng- 
 lish, both men and women, who visit America 
 are impressed by the fact that America is the 
 country of women. Possibly we might deduce 
 from this that Americans make the better hus- 
 bands, and the English the better wives. But 
 this is much too subtle a subject, and one provid- 
 ing too many exceptions to discuss. One may 
 perhaps say tentatively, without much fear of 
 contradiction, that English women take it for 
 granted that their husbands' pleasure and com- 
 fort, and even amusements, should take first 
 place; while the American man rather delegates 
 the part of pleasure, comfort, and amusement to 
 his wife, and she, perhaps, has come to look upon 
 this often as her privilege, and sometimes, alas, 
 as her right. Whatever the reason, the general 
 average of home life is more comfortable in 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 137 
 
 England than in America. Whether it be a mat- 
 ter of political economy, of free trade for example, 
 or not, all the requirements for comfortable living 
 are indubitably cheaper in England than in 
 America. 
 
 People having incomes varying from $1,500 to 
 $15,000 a year can and do live more comfortably 
 in England than with us. In the view of the 
 Frenchman, however, the English require more 
 than the French. Taine writes that where a 
 Frenchman eats a sheep and a half in a year an 
 Englishman eats four sheep ; and goes on to say : 
 "Possess .£20,000 in the funds here or else cut 
 your throat. Such is the idea which constantly 
 haunts me, and the omnibus advertisements sug- 
 gest it still more in informing me that Mappings 
 celebrated razors cost only one shilling,'* This 
 gives the other side of the picture, but to the 
 American, the opportunity for comfort and 
 economy on the same income is far greater here 
 than at home. 
 
 In the case of people with say less than $1,500 
 a year, or more than $20,000 a year, they do not 
 profit so materially by the difference in prices, 
 for the reason that luxury is everywhere expen- 
 sive, and genteel poverty everywhere equally dis- 
 tressing ; or even more distressing in this country 
 where for so many months in the year the land- 
 
138 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 scape looks like a charcoal drawing over which 
 a damp sleeve has been drawn. 
 
 Nothing gives more conclusive proof of the 
 truth of these comparisons than to notice how 
 the English and the Americans respectively go 
 about it to economize. In a large establishment 
 in England the horses for the wife's brougham 
 and victoria would go before the husband's 
 hunters, while the reverse of this would be true 
 in an American establishment compelled to make 
 similar sacrifices. It is the husband, rather than 
 the wife, who is looked to to advertise the family 
 prosperity in England. It would be a very rare 
 case indeed in America where the wife would 
 not have more and greater variety of clothes than 
 her husband, but this is much less true in Eng- 
 land. Even poor men in England have more 
 clothes than well-to-do men in America. An 
 income of $5,000 a year in England would mean 
 four times the amount of clothes that the pos- 
 sessor of the same income in America would think 
 necessary. On the other hand, the percentage of 
 any given income, from $3,000 to $20,000, ex- 
 pended by the wives and daughters for clothes, 
 would be half to two-thirds less in England than 
 with us. A man servant of some kind in the 
 establishment is far more common in England 
 than with us, and he among other things takes 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 139 
 
 care of the master of the house, who is thus 
 more easily capable of dealing with a large 
 wardrobe and has more leisure to employ as he 
 prefers. 
 
 Both for the reason that such service is much 
 cheaper here, and also for the reason already 
 given that the man is the important person, the 
 men are more cared for than the women, and a 
 man servant is a common appanage of men in 
 this country whose incomes would be deemed, 
 and would be, as a matter of fact, quite inadequate 
 for such an expense in America. 
 
 The last things that an Englishman willingly 
 parts with are the appurtenances and conven- 
 iences which permit him to have his friends 
 around him at his own table, or at his club; 
 and this applies up and down through all but the 
 lowest class. With us, on the contrary, the great 
 mass of my countrymen, outside of a compara- 
 tively few dwellers in our large cities, would 
 scarcely miss not having people to dine with 
 them at their own table. An Englishman forced 
 to economize would move out of a big house into 
 a small one in order to keep certain conveniences, 
 such as servants, a certain standard of living and 
 a certain personal dignity, which make for his 
 personal comfort; while an American would try 
 to the last to stick to his big house, but cut down 
 
140 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the number of servants and other personal con- 
 veniences by which he does not set so much 
 store. 
 
 If one were training a race-horse to win an 
 important event, the last thing one would econo- 
 mize upon would be comfortable stabling and 
 the quality of his grooms and his feed. One 
 is continually reminded of "training," in seeing 
 how the hard- worked Englishman, whether in 
 politics, business, literature, the civil service or 
 in a profession cares for himself, and is cared 
 for in his own house. Everything bends to make 
 him and to keep him "fit." 
 
 Such men as the leading statesmen, diplomats, 
 barristers, journalists, bankers, business men 
 generally, and prelates; in short, the dignified, 
 responsible and great ones of the earth are, so to 
 speak, regularly groomed, and kept in condition 
 physically, and mentally, for their arduous duties. 
 They take frequent holidays ; everything that 
 paid service can do, — and such service is as- 
 tonishingly cheap here, — from keeping their 
 clothes to attending to their correspondence and 
 their engagements, they are relieved of. 
 
 Gladstone was a fine horseman in his early 
 days and a widely advertised performer with the 
 axe later ; Balfour plays the piano, plays golf and 
 writes on philosophy — all pastimes in their way ; 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 141 
 
 Roseberyis the most charming occasional speaker 
 in England, and a racing man besides ; Chamber- 
 lain is a grower of orchids, Grey is an authority 
 on fishing, Salisbury was a chemist and in his 
 early days a journalist, and countless others are 
 sportsmen and writers upon sport and travel; 
 while Sir Charles Dilke is the only man I have 
 ever met who seriously impressed me with the 
 idea that a man might be omniscient after all. 
 They make a business of recreation, in order that 
 in its turn business may be in some sort a recrea- 
 tion. A good wholesome doctrine. 
 
 It is not venturesome to say that public opinion 
 in America would not permit a member of the 
 Cabinet to keep a racing stable, and it would not 
 help him politically and would certainly serve as 
 a text for much ridicule were it known that he 
 were a crack golf or racquet player. Such a 
 man with us, with complications of immense im- 
 portance in Siam and in South Africa on his 
 hands, would be considered to be either mad 
 or a traitor should he hurry off for a day or two's 
 journey to a race-course to see one of his horses 
 run in one of the classic races. 
 
 In England these engrossing avocations are 
 deemed to be a wise economy of power; with us 
 they are still looked upon by the great majority 
 as a frivolous waste of energy. Such an innocent 
 
142 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 recreation as a translation of Virgil probably 
 carried little weight in our national legislature, 
 even though the perpetrator was as popular as 
 our ex-Secretary of the Navy, Long, of Massa- 
 chusetts, was and deserved to be. On the other 
 hand, the fame of Gladstone's unscholarly 
 Homeric heresies produced an undoubted effect 
 both in and out of Parliament, upon both his 
 followers and his opponents. They have been at 
 it longer than we have, and hold with Plato that 
 the man is not the body, but the fellow who has 
 the body, and also that change is rest. 
 
 We are not concerned for the moment with the 
 comparative merits of these methods of life ; they 
 serve merely to illustrate the dominant theme. 
 They all go to show that domestic economy in 
 England is devised for, and directed to the aim of 
 making the men as capable as possible of doing 
 their work. The home is not a play-house for 
 the women and their friends; nor a grown-up 
 nursery for the mother and the children, but a 
 place of rest and comfort in which the men may 
 renew their strength. It is possibly fair to deduce 
 from this that house-keeping as a rule in England 
 has a more definite aim and consequently more 
 system, and less waste of energy, and money, 
 than is the case in the majority of American 
 houses. 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 143 
 
 However awkward and flamboyantly dressed 
 the Englishwoman may appear upon the boule- 
 vards of Paris; however dull she may appear 
 when ranged alongside of her American cousin 
 in a drawing-room, in her own house she has few 
 superiors — unless it be in France — as a domestic 
 business manager. 
 
 She gains this ability by previous years of 
 training. It is the exception, rather than the 
 rule, where both the boys and girls in an English 
 household do not receive an allowance. It is 
 true that nothing permits of so many shades of 
 meaning as the word "allowance" when thus 
 used. It may mean anything, from a good- 
 natured paternal promise to pay, which is irregu- 
 larly fulfilled, to a light advance fund for gloves 
 and bon-bons, to be followed each month, or 
 each quarter, by the infantry and heavy artillery 
 of dressmakers' and milliners' bills. Those who 
 have suffered in adolescence from the one, and 
 in maturity from the other, know what a mul- 
 titude of interpretations lie between these ex- 
 tremes. The British interpretation is, however, 
 serious and fixed. Girls and boys alike are held 
 pretty strictly to account and are obliged to live 
 upon a certain fixed sum. Women coming into 
 the management of establishments of their own 
 are already trained to the business aspect of the 
 
144 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 situation. They have also a tremendous ad- 
 vantage over their American cousins, as an aid 
 to wise expenditure, in public opinion. Nobody, 
 from the King down, is either ashamed or afraid 
 to be economical. Here either a man or a woman 
 is thought to be a fool or a vulgarian who is not 
 careful of expenditure; while in America our 
 Negro, Irish, and other foreign servants have 
 been clever enough to make it appear that 
 economy is mean, and as a nation we suffer 
 accordingly. We are fools enough to be fooled 
 by these underlings who, driven from their own 
 countries, come prepared to exploit ours. 
 
 Not so in England. Money is not so easily 
 made, nor has it such earning power in England 
 as in America, and as a consequence it is much 
 more carefully cherished. And money buys more 
 in England than in America. It is by no means 
 true, as prevalent opinion leads one to believe, 
 that money plays a greater role in America than 
 in England. The "almighty dollar" receives 
 no such obsequious homage in its native lair as 
 does the "sovereign" in its own house of worship. 
 Everybody takes tips in England, from the 
 Prime Minister to whom an earldom is given, or 
 the radical who is made a knight, down to the rail- 
 way porter content with threepence. The typical 
 American boy abroad, described by Mr. Henry 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 145 
 
 James, whose frequently repeated war-cry is, 
 "My dad's all-fired rich!" has many even more 
 vulgar prototypes in England. The methods 
 English men and English women will stoop to, 
 and the humiliations they will suffer, in order to 
 make or to get money, are not merely not 
 practised in America, but are quite unknown 
 there. For the very reason that money gives so 
 much of comfort, and standing, and opportunity 
 here, the struggle to get it is unparalleled any- 
 where else in the world. To have money here, 
 no matter what the other advantages of birth or 
 ability may be, is to add a thousand-fold to their 
 value, while to be without it is a heart-breaking 
 handicap. 
 
 A great soldier, a great sailor, a great ruler 
 over one of the English colonies is rewarded for 
 his successes not only by a title, but by a large 
 gift of money. Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, 
 Lord Cromer are all cases in point. They were 
 not only promoted in the social scale, but hand- 
 somely rewarded by gifts of money. 
 
 There are few Americans of a certain standing 
 who cannot tell extraordinary tales of the humili- 
 ating proceedings of needy aristocrats from Eng- 
 land; from the men who are out and out black- 
 legs to the women who exploit their American hosts 
 for the purpose of gambling in the stock market. 
 
146 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 But this is not by any chance to be a chronicle of 
 gossip. We have our social fringes as well as 
 the English. It is intended, in recalling the mis- 
 deeds of some of our visitors, merely to illustrate 
 the fearful temptation people of a certain class 
 are under in their endeavor to keep up appear- 
 ances, and to note to what extremes they will go 
 to keep themselves even ostensibly afloat. A 
 Mississippi steamboat captain maintained that 
 his boat drew so little water that she would float 
 wherever there had been a heavy dew ! A needy 
 Englishwoman will float her financial social 
 craft or try to do so on even shallower water than 
 that; and no spectacle is more inexpressibly 
 pitiable. To have been somebody and to be- 
 come nobody; to have had and not to have, are 
 more appalling changes here than with us. The 
 successful here are rewarded as in no other coun- 
 try in the world, and the strong train and fight 
 for the prizes grimly; and the weak hang on to 
 the shreds of prosperity in a painful and humilia- 
 ting way. In a country therefore where money is 
 so potent and so dijBBcult to acquire, those who 
 have the disbursing of it must be trained to, or 
 acquire wisdom in, its use, even in the affairs 
 of the household. 
 
 The fact that the English house is so ostensibly, 
 and first and foremost, conducted with the aim of 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 147 
 
 making the men comfortable, makes it easy to 
 understand and to give the reasons for the 
 greater economy practised therein. Men suffer 
 from a far more severe strain of competition in 
 England than with us, and economy always, 
 whether it be economy of method, of time, or 
 of money, is just so much saved from the im- 
 perative, for the voluntary. There is no possi- 
 bility of great exertion without frequent periods 
 of rest. This is taken into account here. In 
 England men have more avocations, more amuse- 
 ments, more interests outside of the daily round 
 of pressing business than with us. These avoca- 
 tions demand leisure, and economy is the mother 
 of leisure. The percentage of men — although 
 much less than it was twenty-five years ago — who 
 aside from their engrossing pursuits of business 
 or profession, devote themselves to some hobby, 
 if one may call it so, is overwhelmingly greater 
 than with us. And one may say unreservedly 
 that this is a good thing. "You'll get no good 
 from all your runnin' and sparrin', sir, without 
 plenty of rest!*' was the oft-repeated injunction 
 of an old trainer of athletes. The hour's com- 
 plete rest after the eight-mile spin was what 
 made the muscle. 
 
 The employment of man's leisure hours has 
 most to do with making or marring him. "Le 
 
148 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 temps le mieux employe est celui qu'on perds!" 
 The number of men who raise horses, or dogs, 
 or pigs, or sheep, or cows; who are players at 
 cricket, golf, tennis, or rowing; who collect books, 
 prints, or autographs, Japanese curios or odd 
 bits of porcelain; who are studying an ancient 
 or a modern language; who make a business of 
 doing a bit of travelling every year; who climb 
 mountains, or explore new countries; who go in 
 for hunting, shooting, fishing, botany or geology ; 
 who study some branch of archeology, or dig for 
 the roots of a genealogical tree, is astonishingly 
 large. Indeed the man of even moderate means 
 who is without some such, more or less important, 
 recreation is, one may almost say, the exception. 
 Of course I am speaking now of men of serious 
 pursuits. The idle club lounger is no more a 
 stranger here than with us, and even less worth 
 classifying. To know something about many 
 things, and everything about something, is a 
 good educational ideal, besides giving breadth, 
 variety, and a saline interest to life. An English- 
 man's holiday is looked forward to, planned for, 
 and provided for with some care; while all too 
 often in America a holiday to a busy man over 
 thirty-five is a white elephant, which he ends by 
 turning over to his wife and daughters as a 
 mount. 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 149 
 
 One is in no danger of exaggerating here, at 
 least, for the intense competition of English life 
 to-day, which makes it necessary that men should 
 "train" in order to achieve success, or even so 
 much as hold their own, is everywhere manifest. 
 
 In so far as these Englishmen take better care 
 of themselves, they are younger for their years 
 than our men. I am controverting the received 
 opinion about the English, both on the Continent 
 and in America, when I say that Englishmen 
 laugh and smile and "lark" more than other 
 men of mature age. I have noted how men of 
 different ages play together ; so, too, they get on 
 comfortably and happily together in all sorts of 
 ways. This may be due to the fact that priggish- 
 ness is so abhorred here, and, consequently, 
 serious matters are not much discussed, intel- 
 lectual differences between men of different ages 
 are not so marked, and men in their conversation 
 as well as in their games are more on the same 
 level. Any assumption of superiority is frowned 
 upon, and both young and old make a mild 
 form of "chaff" the conversational medium of 
 intercourse. At the club, in the country house 
 billiard room, over their cigars and coffee after 
 dinner, the conversation seldom drifts beyond the 
 understanding, or the easy participation therein 
 of those most mildly endowed intellectually. 
 
150 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The young and the old are much more to- 
 gether than with us. At a dinner in town, at a 
 house party in the country, there is no dividing 
 people by their ages. Fathers and sons, uncles 
 and nephews, are much more at home with one 
 another than with us, and see much more of one 
 another, and have apparently more in common. 
 In the Row of a morning, at the cricket games, 
 at the shooting and jfishing and racing, at the 
 billiard table after dinner, the youngsters be- 
 tween twenty and thirty not only mingle with but 
 are the boon companions of their elders. It is 
 generally noted how much more a man of the 
 world the English boy is than the American boy. 
 He probably does not know as much, he cer- 
 tainly is not so sharp and quick, but he is far 
 more of a man, speaking of course very generally 
 and leaving room for exceptions. This is due 
 to the fact that the English boy spends so much 
 of his time with his elders. A common ground 
 of meeting and conversation is of course sport, 
 and in that realm prowess and experience, and 
 not age, mark the differences between men. 
 Here a man is merely as old as his handicap at 
 the games he plays ; and the number of " scratch'* 
 men over forty is greater than in any other 
 country in the world. 
 
 They love sport, it is true, for its own sake; 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 151 
 
 »■ 
 but they realize that youthfulness is a valuable 
 asset in affairs, in politics, in social life, and so 
 make a business of keeping young. 
 
 The Englishman at home on his own little 
 island and amongst his own friends is, contrary 
 to the opinion almost universally held abroad, a 
 very cheerful and boyish person. He has noth- 
 ing of the feline flavor that almost always per- 
 tains to the indoor man. The cleverest amongst 
 them conceal their cleverness, and the race as a 
 whole are rigid abstainers from all forms of 
 intellectual meat and drink as such. The rule 
 of thumb and common-sense methods are good 
 enough for them, and thus far their national pre- 
 eminence has not forced them to question their 
 value. 
 
 Nature comes down hard on those who go too 
 far in the development of the brain. We are 
 more cheerful, younger, better tempered, and 
 saner, most of us, the more we live out of doors, 
 eat and drink without thinking of it, and give 
 the brain no more than its fair share of work 
 to do. This is the attitude of the Englishman 
 toward life. One can breed to physical, but 
 not very successfully to mental, type, and the 
 English by intuition have neglected any attempt 
 to do so. The boulevards of Paris swarm with 
 mediocre intellectual celebrities, all too many of 
 
152 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 them, of a most unwholesome odor; even we 
 Americans are still more or less obsessed, at any 
 rate in politics, by the haranguer, the mounte- 
 bank, and the wire-puller. The Englishman will 
 have none of them. He refuses to consent to the 
 burial of Herbert Spencer in Westminster Abbey ; 
 he proclaims in the House of Lords by the mouth 
 of a cricketing peer that: "Lord's Cricket 
 Ground is one of the most sacred spots in Eng- 
 land," a statement received with loud cheers by 
 that assembly when it was proposed to cut into 
 the grounds for a tram line, and he goes his way 
 through the world quite convinced that he is 
 right in his estimate of the comparative value of 
 mind and matter. Even their formally intel- 
 lectual professions are filled with men, in the 
 church, in the law, in medicine, and the like, 
 who openly exalt the material rather than the 
 intellectual and spiritual side. 
 
 That fine fellow, the Church of England par- 
 son, is one of the most useful persons in England, 
 but it is because he is generally an outdoor rather 
 than an indoor man. A small boy here was 
 asked what he would like to be were he grown 
 up. He hesitated a moment and then said: 
 "I think it would be rather jolly to be a sporting 
 parson!'* 
 
 It is this attitude toward life that makes the 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 153 
 
 Frenchman and the American cry, "dull," 
 when the Englishman is mentioned. I should 
 phrase it differently. He is very young, and he 
 is sane and seldom mentally finical, but he is a 
 very sophisticated man of the world in the best 
 sense of the phrase for all that. It is not dull to 
 succeed, and as the world stands to-day he is 
 still first in the race. 
 
 I emphasize this trait of youthfulness, and 
 this habit of theirs of the young and the old living 
 more together and having more in common than 
 do we, because this is distinctly the Englishman 
 as he is at home, and distinctly not what he is 
 held to be abroad. With us, "young people" 
 are often enough spoken of, and treated by their 
 elders, as though they were a class by themselves, 
 bounded by eighteen on the south and by, say, 
 twenty-five on the north. This is the absurd 
 fiction of a shallow and a provincial civilization. 
 It makes boys and girls silly, and it often makes 
 their elders shy and pompous. Neither old nor 
 young profit by such exclusions. Every man 
 does his work better, and every woman lives her 
 life more serenely, the more of youthfulness and 
 vigor and optimism there is in the atmosphere. 
 There is not only the good fellowship, not only 
 the experience of age and the daring of youth, 
 but a saner tone all round. A man is not dead at 
 
154 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 forty, nor infallible at twenty, and it is well that 
 Forty and Twenty should rub up against one 
 another and make the discovery frequently. It 
 is good for both. The importance of this is well 
 understood here, where only the "fittest" and 
 the "most fit" survive. 
 
 There are more than 1,200 ordained clergy of 
 the Anglican Church without parishes, not to 
 mention some sixty-five who were actually, at 
 last accounts, in the workhouse; 85 per cent, of 
 the barristers have nothing to do; 80 per cent, 
 do not make $1,200 a year. The agricultural 
 depression of late years has been such that in- 
 comes from land have been sadly reduced all 
 round. The great increase in the last twenty- 
 five years of facilities for gaining something of an 
 education at small cost has flooded the market 
 with both men and women who are ready to sell, 
 or rent, their small intellectual equipments at 
 almost starvation prices. Even when one goes 
 further up the ladder there are many more men 
 in England than in America who feel this press- 
 ure of competition, and who prepare themselves, 
 and look after their reputation and their health, 
 with scrupulous care lest they be shoved to one 
 side. 
 
 A certain moral stability in matters of business 
 and finance is partly due to this. A man cannot 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 155 
 
 afford to fail, cannot afford to make a mistake 
 here, for there is Httle chance of his ever getting 
 back if he does. The swarms of EngHshmen in 
 South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, China, 
 Japan, Canada, South America, and the north- 
 western parts of our own country attest the fact 
 that only the best equipped and the very strong- 
 est can hold their own in the tight little island 
 itself. 
 
 At this moment a gentleman with a fair income 
 has his oldest boy, of nineteen, at work with the 
 village blacksmith ; and the next, a boy of seven- 
 teen, in a neighboring carpenter's shop; and 
 some months later they will leave home to try 
 farming in Manitoba. These are not isolated 
 examples. They happen to come under im- 
 mediate observation. There are hundreds of 
 gentlemen's sons who are obliged to leave Eng- 
 land to find occupation and a living. They 
 cannot be supported, or support themselves, at 
 home. The strictness with which these matters 
 are arranged and carried out here is unknown in 
 America and would be deemed cold-blooded in- 
 deed by the American parent. The younger 
 children of wealthy parents soon learn that they 
 must fend for themselves. To be second, third 
 and fourth sons of a great house is often enough 
 to live upon a pittance, and there is no redress 
 
156 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 either at law or by appealing to sentiment. It 
 is the law of the land, and anyone at all acquaint- 
 ed with England's social life is soon aware of the 
 hardships of the noble and gentle scions who 
 happen to be born too late. It is this arrange- 
 ment, of course, which explains two things which 
 are at first puzzling: First, that so many Eng- 
 lishmen must seek in other lands for position and 
 a living, and, second, that there is so little virulent 
 class feeling in this nation of class distinctions. 
 A duke's grandson is only a commoner; an 
 earl's second son's children may be, to all intents 
 and purposes, poverty stricken — not infrequent- 
 ly they are. But they are of the same blood and 
 very nearly related to the great ones of the coun- 
 try, and, therefore, in spite of the disparity in 
 worldly goods, they still remain, out of pride, 
 supporters of the classes rather than the 
 masses. 
 
 Since the days when political places, commis- 
 sions in the army, and fat livings in the church 
 were in the gift of a feudal aristocracy, the straits 
 to which the younger sons and daughters are put 
 are illustrated by the countless amateur wine 
 merchants, shopkeepers, servants' agencies, mil- 
 linery shops, tobacconists, brokers, jobbers, 
 agents for estates, and the like, in the hands of 
 gentlemen and ladies, trying to make a living. 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 157 
 
 One man born two years before another comes in 
 for title, wealth, position, and opportunity; the 
 second son comes in for a beggarly income 
 grudgingly given, while the grandchildren of the 
 eldest son and the grandchildren of the second 
 son may be poles apart in wealth and status. 
 But it is exactly the same blood, and if blood 
 tells, then these descendants of the nobility, but 
 without title, ought to make themselves felt for 
 the general good of the nation. And they do. 
 This is economy indeed. Economy even of blood 
 and family. The eldest gets practically all, the 
 younger sons a pittance. The softly sheltered 
 American girl, of a family only moderately well- 
 off, would be amazed, if she could be induced to 
 believe the truth, at the small incomes of many a 
 nobleman's sisters and daughters. This, too, is 
 economy in a still larger sense. It is the economy 
 of concentrating even the money power in a few 
 hands. The vast amount of capital in the hands 
 of comparatively few people has been one of the 
 great factors in enabling England in the last 
 hundred years to become the landlord of the 
 great industries of the world. That time is 
 fast passing away, but England's unprecedented 
 prosperity from 1815 to 1875 was to some extent 
 due to that: She was the only country in the 
 world with large supplies of liquid capital ready 
 
158 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 for investment in those days, and she has proj&ted 
 enormously from the situation. Her dividends 
 pour in from every corner of the earth to-day as 
 a consequence of this. The concentration of her 
 wealth and the dispersal of her younger sons 
 have been features of her economy of manage- 
 ment and prime factors in her empire making. 
 It is harsh domestic doctrine, this, of all to 
 the eldest and little or nothing at all to the 
 younger ones, but when one looks about and 
 sees the seedy, out-at-elbows noblesse of France, 
 Italy, Germany, and Russia, without leadership, 
 without wealth, without power, and often merely 
 the anaemic transmitters of foolish faces, the 
 system appears to have something to be said in 
 its favor. England is a commercial country and 
 her aristocracy is still held, or holds itself, at the 
 highest price. The foolish American mother, 
 and the ambitious American girl, find that titles 
 on the Continent may be bought by the dozen, 
 while in England they still command a fair, 
 though declining price, for each one. 
 
 One does not wonder then, at the domestic 
 economy, or, on the other hand, at the applause, 
 the obsequiousness, almost the servility, which 
 greet success in England. The prizes are fewer, 
 they are far more difficult to win, and they are 
 splendidly rewarded. A really great man in 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 159 
 
 England is rewarded as in no other land, while 
 the failures suffer in proportion. 
 
 Of all nations in the world, with perhaps the 
 exception of our own, England has had the repu- 
 tation, at least, of demanding that success should 
 be accompanied by virtue. At any rate since 
 the days of those torpid Teutons, the Georges, 
 this has been the case. But the strife has become 
 so keen that even this imperative consideration 
 is sometimes lost sight of. So long as a statesman 
 keeps within legal bounds, he is judged rather 
 by the power he wields than by his reputation at 
 the club, or in his house. It may be said of 
 course that genius always, everywhere, has been 
 permitted a certain license, but that is not the 
 point at issue here. The English people would 
 never consent to be ruled by a genius, or to permit 
 genius to be in power amongst them. Anything 
 that is not ostentatiously, and plainly to the 
 naked eye, commonplace, they distrust to a man. 
 There is an easily recognized difference between 
 power and genius; the one representing the 
 result of organization, the other the result of 
 temperament; and even to the former there is 
 to-day accorded a liberty in the realm of morals, 
 which the great mass of the English people 
 permit, because they are forced to do so by the 
 exigencies of this keen competitive strife. They 
 
160 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 are driven to employ their able men both at 
 home and abroad without too much scrutiny of 
 their private morals. There have been, and are, 
 great soldiers, sailors, statesmen and pro-consuls 
 in England whose private lives would not endure 
 examination. I forbear illustrating this point. 
 Only an Englishman would criticise the state- 
 ment, and, if he be well-informed, there are too 
 many examples to make it worth debating. 
 
 It may be said, without fear of successful con- 
 tradiction, that if the private life of every public 
 man in England were submitted to the same 
 scrutiny that follows his public performances, 
 there would be more reversals of judgment than 
 would result from the same kind of criticism 
 applied to public men in America. A country 
 which is preeminently a man's country must 
 necessarily suffer from a man's code of morals. 
 Divorce is bad to be sure, but no one who knows 
 England and the Continent and the arrange- 
 ments — often enough open — which take the 
 place of the American divorce-court, would for a 
 moment wish to exchange the latter for the for- 
 mer. No man could hold a position of supreme 
 public trust in America whose private life has 
 been of the character of the male sovereigns of 
 England for an hundred years. And be it remem- 
 bered that they give the lead to their subjects. 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 161 
 
 It is the fashion in America — and it may be 
 doubted whether it is a good one — to sneer at 
 politicians and politics, and to start movements, 
 and to form societies every now and again for 
 the propagation of the gospel among them. 
 Just as professional philanthropy is so often 
 merely benevolence seeking an audience; so the 
 professional reformer is often failure posing as a 
 critic. It is all too often the case after each of 
 these ethical rebellions that the so-called, and 
 self-styled, good men, reveal weaknesses which 
 interfere sadly with the millennium that they 
 propose to introduce. There is such a thing as 
 being so occupied with the shielding of one's 
 own virtues that one has no courage for a more 
 robust form of usefulness. 
 
 The English are rarely deceived in this way. 
 A strong and efficient man is kept in his place so 
 long as he abides by a man's code of morals. It 
 may be expected, but it is not required, that the 
 woman's code should be applied to him. It is 
 fair to say of this particular question that public 
 men, at any rate successful public men in Eng- 
 land, share in the honors, the emoluments, the 
 privileges, and in the 'pardon, granted to every 
 kind of success here. High rank, great power, 
 great wealth, are it is true bound by the supreme 
 law of noblesse oblige. They must give their 
 
162 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 blood, their wealth, and their power on every 
 occasion when their country needs them; and 
 one is only doing England bare justice in saying 
 that right royally they have always done so ; but 
 beyond that, into other ethical realms the dis- 
 cussion had best not go. No man who seeks only 
 to tell the truth and to be understood would 
 willingly irritate his audience into an attitude 
 of defiance. 
 
 The mention of these apparently disconnected 
 points is necessary, because in reality they are 
 the matters which most deeply concern and do 
 muoh to make English home life what it is. In 
 a country where the competition is excessive; 
 where money has unwonted power to purchase 
 comfort, distinguished consideration and even 
 charitable judgment; where success is greeted 
 and rewarded with an enthusiasm and generosity 
 almost unknown elsewhere, and where failure and 
 mediocrity are forced to play very small roles 
 indeed, the men are worth training to win the 
 prizes. |Only a man of gigantic abilities can be 
 uncomfortable and miserable at home and at 
 the same time successful in the world. | This is 
 understood here. ^^Tiether it is the English 
 woman who appreciates it, or the English man 
 who forces this view upon the woman, let some 
 one else say, and let me keep my opinion to 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 163 
 
 myself and be silent. At any rate the English 
 woman knows that she can prevail only through 
 the honors and distinctions of the man. Ubi 
 Clodius, ibi Claudia. The proportion of English 
 women who are satisfied — or appear to be, 
 whether they are or not, who knows ? — to make 
 men comfortable, is very large. 
 
 No man knows just how much tiresome routine 
 and minute supervision go to make that sum 
 total of comfort in his home of which we are 
 writing. But every man knows that economy 
 and system are the elementary principles which 
 must underlie any such happy consummation. 
 
 The economies practised in very many English 
 households, both great and small, would almost 
 be called — and wrongly — meannesses, with 
 us. To begin with, houses are less extrava- 
 gantly, though quite as conveniently furnished in 
 those regions not entered by the public or one's 
 friends. The furnishings of the living rooms and 
 sleeping rooms are curtailed, not however to the 
 point of discomfort, in order that the general 
 average of comfort throughout the house shall 
 be higher. The servants' quarters, whether in 
 big houses or small ones, in town or country, in 
 inns or private houses, are incomparably less 
 convenient, and less comfortable, than with us. 
 The linen room, store room and wine cellar de- 
 
164 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 partments are guarded by lock and key, and 
 managed with a scrupulous nicety of calculation. 
 Soap, candles, tea, sugar, coffee, trifles for the 
 stable and kitchen, in short all the minor de- 
 tails of house-keeping, are looked after as care- 
 fully as are the minor expenditures in a great 
 business house. The fact that a saving in 
 candle ends, persisted in for a year, amounts to 
 something is taken into account. Just as I have 
 heard a young oflScer say that he found he could 
 keep another hunter by giving up smoking and 
 drinking, and had promptly done so. This 
 economy which pervades the management of the 
 household machinery, influences the servants as 
 well. The cost of the butter provided each week 
 by a cook, whose name for reasons of charity we 
 forbear to give, in a city house in America, 
 equalled almost exactly what was paid in an 
 establishment on a similar scale in England for 
 all the vegetables and fruit for the same length 
 of time. It is, however, to be noted that a cook 
 of Irish extraction in an American establishment 
 occupies an autocratic position which has no 
 parallel in England. As compared with Amer- 
 ica, servants are plenty and good. This is a 
 subject in which the personal equation plays so 
 predominant a part that it is not open to debate. 
 There are good and bad servants, and good and 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 165 
 
 bad masters, everywhere ; only it is worth noting 
 how very often the good masters and mistresses 
 and the good servants, and vice versa, happen to 
 come together. 
 
 In this matter of servants, competition is the 
 dominant influence. Men and women servants 
 are a recognized and self-respecting class in 
 England. The King gives the medal of some 
 inferior order to the butler of a house he visits, 
 or has done so on one occasion at least. This 
 marks his notion that servants are a recognized 
 order, of a certain grade, in the State. Domestic 
 service and politics are not considered here the 
 sole employments requiring no preliminary and 
 no special training. They enter the service and 
 devote themselves to it and work to rise in it, not 
 to escape from it. Much is expected from them, 
 and, comparatively speaking, much is received 
 from them. Servants' wages, even including 
 beer money and other perquisites, are much 
 lower than in America, though it is claimed that 
 English servants specialize and consequently one 
 needs more of them. A cook in England re- 
 ceives from $125 a year in the country to $200 a 
 year in London — more of course, much more, 
 in large establishments. Housemaids receive 
 from $80 in the country to $120 or more in 
 London. Of men servants it is not so easy to 
 
166 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 speak in figures. A good all-around man servant, 
 where only one is kept, may not cost more than 
 $200 a year in the country, while in London 
 wages vary. One distinguished nobleman with 
 a house in Park Lane, and a large establishment 
 in the country, remarked that he knew he paid 
 his head man, or butler, too much, but that he 
 liked him, and therefore kept him on at $450 a 
 year. Men servants are sometimes paid fancy 
 prices where they are endowed with six feet of 
 height, beautiful calves, and good complexions. 
 Tall parlor-maids fetch more than short ones, 
 and not long ago we saw an advertisement in the 
 London Daily Telegraph for a man servant who 
 was expected to look after a pony and make him- 
 self useful in the house, and also to sing in the 
 choir of the parish church ; the wages ojffered for 
 such a domestic Admirable Crichton being $120 
 a year. An advertisement for a governess for 
 two little girls, the wages offered being $125 a 
 year, brought 162 replies in two days. It may 
 be seen at a glance without going into more facts 
 and figures in relation to a wearisome topic that 
 in England servants are cheaper, better trained, 
 more plenty, and better satisfied with their po- 
 sitions as servants, than in America. This state 
 of things below-stairs lessens materially the diffi- 
 culties of house-keeping economically, although as 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 167 
 
 a final word one may say that there are some men 
 and some women who would have good and faith- 
 ful servants in Seringapatam, and others who 
 could not keep a cook in Paradise. We have no 
 desire to enter the arena of flying adjectives and 
 bitter adverbs of the Servant Question. As in 
 religion and politics it is, far oftener than is ad- 
 mitted, a matter of temperament rather than any- 
 thing else. This explanation is not generally wel- 
 comed, because few people are willing to damn 
 their failures and themselves by accepting a 
 simple explanation of what they deem to be a 
 complicated problem. It concerns us here merely 
 to state that servants' wages in England are, 
 roughly speaking, fifty per cent, less than in 
 America. 
 
 The reasons why economy is more general in 
 English than in American households are scarcely 
 more important than the results of such economy. 
 The best and all-sufl5cient result is that economy 
 gives leisure. System and regularity and lack of 
 worry give men more time to sleep, more time to 
 eat, more time to play, and more time and a 
 better preparation for work. In America our 
 first distinguished men were from the South, 
 where men had most leisure ; and after that from 
 prosperous New England. And, say what one 
 may — and there is much to be said — in praise 
 
168 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of the hard taskmaster, poverty, it must be 
 granted that the larger part of the distinguished 
 work of the world has been done, and is done, by 
 men who have had, or who have made for them- 
 selves, leisure. The man who voluntarily per- 
 mits, or who is forced by circumstances to permit, 
 things to get into the saddle and ride, necessarily 
 lacks the confidence and the mastery which 
 marks off the men who ride from the men who 
 are ridden. 
 
 Mr. Buckle, after his manner, might deduce 
 from these facts that the saving of candle ends 
 in English households results in the colonizing of 
 the globe by Englishmen. One need hardly go 
 to such lengths as this, and yet it were unfair to 
 English women, whose reputation for formless 
 taste in dress and for hobbledehoy shyness of 
 manner is already a sufficient handicap, not to 
 say that the efficient ordering of their households 
 has much to do with the working power of their 
 men at home, and the influence and valor of their 
 men abroad. It may be said, too, in this con- 
 nection, that English women do not make such 
 demands upon the time, and the engagements, of 
 their men folk as do women in America. Eng- 
 lishmen have far more occupations, and many 
 more pastimes and uses for their leisure, apart 
 from their wives and sisters, than do American 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 169 
 
 men. This is not meant as suggesting a less 
 happy, or a less high standard of home life, for 
 th.at would not be true. It means merely that 
 English men spend more of their time with men, 
 either for business or pleasure, or the occupation 
 of their leisure in other ways, than do Americans. 
 The American woman expects more, demands 
 more, receives more attention, from the American 
 man, than does the English woman from the 
 English man. It begins in the nursery, and con- 
 tinues through the school age; the male animal 
 is the favored one. More is done for him, more 
 is expended upon him, and the household f ocusses 
 its energies upon his development rather than 
 upon that of the female. The result is the as- 
 sumption of rights and privileges by the male, 
 as over against the female, from childhood to, 
 and through, maturity. This is a delicate thing 
 to define, but all the more valuable as a contribu- 
 tion to the study of the English, because it is 
 subtle and not easy of definition. There is an 
 atmosphere in every household which predis- 
 poses the girls to look up to the boys, and most 
 English women never recover from it, even where 
 the one to whom they are expected to do rever- 
 ence is openly unworthy of it. 
 
 As over against the French methods of bringing 
 up their boys, as though they were girls, the results 
 
170 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 are in themselves suiOficient comment upon which 
 is the better system. An American may approve 
 of the results in the bearing of the men themselves, 
 but he is none the less tempted to wonder some- 
 times if the English woman is not here and there 
 deprived of a little of all she has a right to in- 
 herit. But, to put it bluntly, this is no affair of 
 ours. The American girls are marrying Eng- 
 lish men, and the English women are not marry- 
 ing American men; and therefore comments 
 upon the situation may be looked upon as acts 
 of supererogation. To state the case at all de- 
 mands the explanation that this is one of the 
 prime factors in the development of the English 
 man and in making him what we find him. 
 
 England is not only a man's country, but the 
 English man is preeminently a man's man. The 
 prizes here go to the soldiers, the sailors, the 
 statesmen, the colonizers, the winners of new 
 territory and the rulers over them, the travellers 
 and explorers, the great churchmen and success- 
 ful schoolmasters, to those in short with mas- 
 culine brains and bodies. The feminine, the 
 effeminate, and the Semitic prowess, is rewarded 
 it is true — more of late years than ever before, 
 be it said — but it is not the ideal of the nation. 
 It has been wittily said that a statesman is a 
 dead politician; but in England this does not 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 171 
 
 apply. The great statesmen, or the leading 
 politicians, as one may please to call them, re- 
 ceive their rewards early and often. As a conse- 
 quence, England has had for hundreds of years 
 an honor-roll of mighty men at the helm of her 
 affairs. 
 
 England has never had a social upheaval 
 which has driven out her old families, and in 
 consequence the public service commands an 
 ability, and on the whole is conducted with an 
 integrity, due to the fine feeling of a class long 
 trained in genuine patriotism such as no other 
 country can boast of. 
 
 Spain drove out the Moors and the Jews. 
 France expelled the Huguenots, and later in- 
 dulged in an orgie of indiscriminate murder of 
 her aristocracy. Italy has emasculated her great 
 families, leaving England alone the possessor of 
 gentlemen of race and character with pedigrees 
 of responsibility. 
 
 We have dared to note here and there through- 
 out this volume certain signs of decadence in the 
 England of to-day. Not the least ominous of 
 these is that those who are leaving England are 
 Saxons and Celts, while those who are coming in 
 are Teutons and Jews. 
 
 The old sturdiness and independence of char- 
 acter seem, at least to the outsider, to be deterior- 
 
172 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ating somewhat rapidly. Under the flimsy aca- 
 demic disguise of sociahsm, sops of sentiment are 
 more common than they were. Trade unions, 
 workhouses, free schooHng, old-age pensions, 
 shorter hours of work, endless public and private 
 charities, have inadvertently set up a standard 
 of sloth which must prove disastrous to the 
 former and better traditions of the race. It is 
 not the first time in the history of the races of 
 the world that the forerunners of decay have been 
 distaste for steady work, craving for excitement, 
 a mania for gambling and loose-minded willing- 
 ness to look to the State for the solution of 
 personal problems by general and generous 
 legislation. Public men confronted by the cry 
 for bread and games are tempted to sell their 
 political souls for place and preferment. 
 
 A man with ability, ambition, money, rank, 
 knows that the best the world has to give in the 
 way of power is his if he succeed here in politics, 
 as does the man without rank or wealth, and one 
 and all are tempted to go into politics, rather 
 than tempted to keep away altogether. 
 
 At the bottom of this is the feeling, scarcely 
 realized by the English themselves fully, that the 
 individual who can do and does most for Eng- 
 land, is the one to whom the great prizes belong, 
 and to him rank and wealth are given without 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 173 
 
 stint. England is a small island, scarcely bigger 
 than the State of New York alone, and her very 
 geographical position is an overwhelming demand 
 for men, men, men! Without them she is 
 starved, shorn, humiliated, lost. This is true of 
 every country to be sure, but it is the essential 
 truth about this great Empire with its heart in 
 a small island. 
 
 When we emphasize therefore certain peculiar 
 features of their home life here, it is seen now 
 at a glance not only that certain facts are true, 
 but that they must be true. There would be no 
 England without them. 
 
 That Englishmen are such hardy explorers, 
 such persistent settlers of the waste places of the 
 earth, attests their love of home. They go, not 
 because they wish to go, but because they hope 
 to return with enough to establish a home in 
 England. 
 
 Neither English men nor English women like 
 the unattached and nomadic existence of the 
 hotel and the boarding house. The proportion 
 of Americans who could have a modest home, but 
 who prefer the flat and stale unprofitableness of 
 hotels and boarding houses, is, as compared with 
 English people of the same income, vastly greater. 
 And perhaps no one cause of the stricter economy 
 of English households is more potent than this. 
 
174 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 To have a house and a bit of garden of one's own, 
 an English man or woman will submit to the 
 utmost economy of expenditure, and the most 
 rigorously accurate system of accounts. It may 
 be a social prejudice or an ingrained habit of the 
 British stamp of mind, but whatever it is, there 
 can be no doubt, that the Englishman's ideal of 
 life is to be a free man and master of the castle 
 of his own house. 
 
 To a greater extent than is commonly appre- 
 ciated this domestic economy throws light upon 
 the larger questions of British politics, whether 
 domestic or foreign; and, conversely, British 
 politics both at home and abroad are focussed 
 upon the maintenance in freedom and comfort 
 of thousands of British householders. Home 
 Rule for Ireland, the Education Bill, the Aboli- 
 tion of the House of Lords, the Employers' 
 Liability Bill, the Licensing Bill, which are now 
 the gist of political discussion are, one discovers 
 on closer inspection, argued for and against on no 
 theoretical grounds, but ever with an eye to their 
 probable or possible bearing upon British do- 
 mestic economy. The severest stricture that can 
 be passed upon a man's political course by his 
 opponents is that he neglects Imperial interests 
 in his desire for a mere party majority. The 
 translation of that is, that it is considered the 
 
ENGLISH HOME LIFE 175 
 
 most fatal thing to be said against even the 
 greatest statesman, that he subordinates the 
 safety of British commerce and consequently the 
 security of British possessions and incomes, and 
 thus necessarily the peace and comfort of Eng- 
 lish homes, to his own ambition. 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 
 
 THIS title for a chapter might be considered 
 unnecessarily impertinent, not to say 
 insulting, were it not that it must be 
 promptly answered in the negative. Why then 
 put the question at all ? For the very sufficient 
 reason that it is a common misapprehension in 
 America, in France, and elsewhere, and because 
 in explaining this misapprehension we shall light 
 upon interesting characteristics of Mr. John 
 Bull and his family. 
 
 The slowness and steadiness of the race tempt 
 the superficial critic to call them dull. But the 
 people who have produced Chaucer, Shakespeare 
 Swift, Sterne, Sydney Smith, Charles Lamb, and 
 Robert Louis Stevenson, may well laugh at any 
 accusation of their lack of intellectual humor; 
 while the people who have gobbled the wealth 
 and commerce of the world for a century may 
 look on with some amusement while other nations 
 call them dull. 
 
 176 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 177 
 
 On Sunday, June twenty-fourth, 1906, there 
 appeared in a reputable London newspaper a 
 communication to the effect that if America were 
 in earnest in her expressions of friendhness 
 toward Great Britain she should at once take 
 steps to redeem the Confederate bonds! There 
 is no lack of grim humor here, and this is a 
 typical illustration of the lack of dulness of this 
 race who never for a moment lose sight of the 
 main chance. The insolent impertinence of this 
 suggestion at this stage of the game, when the 
 English powers that be are well aware that our 
 friendship is a valuable international asset, and 
 when an alliance between, say, Germany, Amer- 
 ica, Japan, and France would spell ruin to the 
 British Empire, is proof enough that whatever 
 the circumstances, no sentimental haziness veils 
 the keen, commercial, selfish vision of the Eng- 
 lish. The Pecksniflian ethics which raises hands 
 in horror at our insurance scandals, our trust 
 methods, at the disclosures of immorality in 
 Germany, on the part of a nation which sells its 
 Indian opium in China under the protection of 
 British guns, and keeps twenty-five thousand 
 Chinamen in the mines of South Africa, points 
 to a very highly developed sense of humor. 
 
 Be it said therefore in this connection that this 
 question of dulness though it is not an enlivening 
 
178 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 quality in society, is nature's resource for pre- 
 serving steadiness of conduct and consistency of 
 opinion. It enforces concentration, which is the 
 necessary and fundamental mental quality pre- 
 ceding all others, no matter how lofty or how 
 rare they be, and a people who learn slowly do 
 not learn much, and then only what they must. 
 The Englishman might say, with not a little in 
 his favor, that the best security for a people's 
 doing their duty is that they should not be dis- 
 tracted from doing it by knowing much else. 
 
 Perhaps what the American calls dulness, the 
 Englishman calls steadiness. Indeed "steady" 
 is a much used word among the English. 
 "Steady, men!" you hear on every parade- 
 ground, and no doubt hundreds of times in every 
 battle where Englishmen are fighting, and they 
 are fighting somewhere, in big or little fashion, 
 much of the time. 
 
 "Quand Italic sera sans poison, 
 Et France sans trahison, 
 Et I'Angleterrre sans guerre; 
 Lors sera le monde sans terre." 
 
 "Steady lad!" "Steady girl!" you hear from 
 every horseman, whether he be riding or driving. 
 The English genius is not for analysis, but for 
 action. He seeks to act, to do, to accomplish, 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 179 
 
 and the first necessity is to get people, or things, 
 or horses, or ships, or balloons, or motors, steady. 
 They cannot start, they cannot be controlled 
 without steadiness. They demand this quality 
 above all others in their statesmen, their soldiers, 
 as well as in their horses. There is no talk of 
 glory as in France ; no constant vision of self-ad- 
 vertisement, and of self-advancement by means 
 of the reporter's pen and camera. C^England ex- 
 pects every man to do his duty, that's all. The 
 glory and the advertisement may take care of 
 themselves. In the naval fight between an Eng- 
 lish and an American ship, during the war of 
 1812, the American vessel appeared, flags flying. 
 A young officer on the English ship asked his 
 captain (Captain Broke, of the "Shannon") if 
 they, too, might not put up more bunting. " No," 
 was the reply, "this has always been an un- 
 assuming ship!" Such people keep the chief 
 end in plain view, and are therefore not dazzled, 
 not turned aside and tempted by side issues. 
 Diversity of interest and desultoriness — this 
 last word in its nice etymological sense — are 
 not characteristics of the English. We some- 
 times think them dull for this reason. 
 
 Some of their great men would probably ap- 
 pear dull at our after-dinner festivities, alongside 
 of certain American publicists we might mention. 
 
180 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 who have been renowned principally as "orators'* 
 and story-tellers; but what man, however much 
 he loved his country, would mention them in the 
 same breath with Cromer, Milner, Kitchener, as 
 public servants and patriots ? Disagreeable as it 
 may be for the American to say so, it is the differ- 
 ence between mastiffs and monkeys! In the 
 long run, which of these two types of men is dull, 
 the for years hard-working, unheard of Cromer, 
 or the ceaselessly chattering simian public men 
 we all have in mind? At least we must give 
 credit where credit is due. When we take this 
 superficial view of dulness,the Englishman shines 
 by comparison with the oratorical flippancy and 
 the ready acceptance of the part of after-dinner 
 clown which have made so many reputations in 
 America. Not that we have not our own type of 
 self-sacrificing public servants in men like Wood, 
 Magoon,Taft and scores more, but how shabbily 
 do we reward them ! 
 
 There are three kinds of more or less intelligent 
 men nowadays who encumber the earth: men 
 who talk for the sake of talking; men who write 
 for the sake of writing; men who read for the 
 pleasure of reading. But they do nothing. They 
 incite no one else to do anything, either by voice, 
 pen or example. It is worth while remembering 
 that this so-called dull race has produced the 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 181 
 
 greatest literature since the days of Greece. I 
 believe that the secret lies here : their great men 
 have had things to say^ instead of trying to write 
 things. French literature is notable for trying to 
 write things, phrase things elegantly, or saliently ; 
 attempting to put little thoughts in very fine 
 clothes. 
 
 We in America have had no time, no energy to 
 spare for literature. What we have produced is 
 of the second-rate order — with perhaps the 
 exception of Poe and Hawthorne — but with one 
 piece of prose, unsurpassed in the English lan- 
 guage since the King James version of the Bible, 
 Lincoln's address at Gettysburg. Lincoln, no 
 more than these Englishmen, was a man who 
 wrote, or talked, for effect. He concentrated his 
 energy and his brilliant powers, — powers un- 
 recognized at the time by his fellows — upon one 
 object, and he saved his country by his success. 
 
 It is not strange that the people who believe 
 in action should produce a great literature. All 
 penmen envy men of action not only their deeds 
 but their phrases. Raleigh, Cromwell, Clive, 
 Hastings, Nelson, Roberts, Grant, Lincoln, Lee 
 and "Stonewall" Jackson have written phrases 
 of memorable prose. "Trust in God and keep 
 your powder dry ! " writes Cromwell. *'I stand 
 astonished at my own moderation!" says Clive. 
 
182 ENQLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 "We'll fight it out on this line, if it takes all 
 summer!" and "Unconditional surrender!" are 
 phrases of Grant. It would be a mockery of 
 life if the men of deeds and daring did not write 
 better than those who study them. Great litera- 
 ture has never been born inside four walls. It is 
 tossed up from the sea, wrung from war, found 
 by running streams, fed in pastures green, and 
 heard best in the clash and clamor of the oppos- 
 ing forces of men in earnest for life and liberty. 
 
 People think it strange that England's reputa- 
 tion in the world rests so largely on her aptitude 
 for poetry and politics. Chaucer, Spenser, 
 Shakespeare, Milton. It is not far from the 
 truth to say that every poet of the small first class 
 is an Englishman, save one, Dante. Goethe 
 and Schiller can hardly be classed with these, 
 much less Corneille or Racine. But it is not 
 strange. The nation of great deeds must of 
 necessity be the nation of great words. 
 
 So little do these English believe in mere talk- 
 ing and writing and reading as such; so little do 
 they trust those superficial attributes that are 
 generally classed under one head, as brilHant, 
 that they have given astonishingly little attention 
 to the education of the masses. While the rest of 
 the Western world has given itself up to the fetish 
 of universal education, they have been quietly 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULLi? 183 
 
 giving themselves to the task of conquering, 
 colonizing, and governing a fifth of the habitable 
 globe. Consciously or unconsciously, they seem 
 to realize that the asylums for the insane are 
 peopled by those whose brains are too active or 
 too morbid; not by those who are slow and dull. 
 The dangers of modern civilization are mostly 
 for the swift, not for the slow. 
 
 Ten years after the beginning of the reign of 
 the late Queen Victoria, not only the children of 
 England, but practically one-half the adults, 
 could neither read nor write. The marriage 
 register is a good test of education, in England, at 
 least, because the married must sign the register. 
 At the time of which we are speaking, roughly 
 fifty years ago, only sixty-seven men in an hun- 
 dred, and fifty-one women in an hundred, could 
 even sign their names. "This leaves little 
 doubt," says the report of the Registrar- General 
 of that date, "that thirty-three in one hundred 
 of the men, and forty-nine in one hundred of the 
 women at the marriageable age, are quite unable 
 to write." We all know very well that the first 
 thing one learns to write is one's own name. In 
 addition to this large percentage of those unable 
 even to write their own names, there must have 
 been a large number who had learned just 
 enough to sign their names and nothing more. 
 
184 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 To write is to read, and it is not stretching a 
 point, therefore, to say that as late as fifty years 
 ago at least one-half of the adult population of 
 England and Wales — not to mention Ireland, 
 where the proportion was, and is, much larger — 
 were in primitive ignorance. 
 
 We in America had public schools before we 
 were a nation ; while England had won an empire 
 before she had given a thought to the education 
 of the masses. It was long after the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century before any attempt was 
 made to break through the matted sward of 
 ignorance of the laboring classes in England. 
 
 To this day the Englishman is quite indifferent 
 to this state of things. Their unobtrusive but 
 virile self-confidence satisfies them that they must 
 be right, that they must be superior. Those of 
 the better class still assume that their use of the 
 English language, for example, whether as writ- 
 ten or spoken is the only proper use thereof. 
 Punch and the Saturday Review still write of 
 Americans as they were wont to do half a century 
 ago. If you have your Punch volumes at hand, 
 turn to the year 1844 and read the article on 
 "Etiquette for American Congressmen," or to 
 the year 1846, pages 19, 71, and 82, or to page 
 104 of the year 1860, and from these opinions 
 the Englishman in the street has not changed. 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 185 
 
 At the high table at Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, sat an American dining as the guest of 
 the Vice-Master. During the dinner his neigh- 
 bor discovering that he was an American re- 
 marked with both flattery and surprise in his 
 voice: "You are the only American who has 
 ever dined with us whom we did not know to be 
 an American by his speech." This is merely a 
 typical instance of the never-ceasing surprise of 
 these insular people to find an outsider using the 
 common language with a delicacy and purity equal 
 to their own. What is the surprise, then, of the 
 American, on his side, to find that England is the 
 home of all those vices of speech of which he has 
 been accused for so long of having the monopoly ! 
 
 Our slang and profanity, picturesque though 
 they be, are constantly noted as peculiar to us. 
 From the days of Elizabeth down, these people 
 have been and are more coarsely profane than 
 we. Elizabeth herself swore "By God's Son." 
 In a letter to Bishop Coxe she wrote: "Proud 
 prelate, you know what you were before I made 
 you what you are; if you do not immediately 
 comply with my request, by God I will unfrock 
 you!" 
 
 Shillingford, the Mayor of Exeter, wishes to 
 make a present of fish to the Lord Chancellor. 
 For some reason, the fault of the treasurer or of 
 
186 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the carrier, the fish do not arrive, so he writes: 
 "Christ's curse have they both and say ye Amen 
 non sine merito, and but ye dare say so, think so, 
 think so!" After the Restoration "the new 
 breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened 
 their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which 
 a porter would now be ashamed, and without 
 calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, 
 confound them, blast them, and damn them." 
 The tendency to coarseness of speech still ob- 
 tains. Their appeal is usually to the physical 
 and fleshly. A charming English lady returning 
 from the golf links on a wet day remarks that she 
 is "in a nasty mess!" The Englishman of a 
 certain class uses "bloody," "beastly," "rotten," 
 "bloomin' " and " Go on, you brute" he murmurs 
 to his short puts at golf, while in commendation 
 he expresses himself by the hesitating, unimag- 
 inative "goodish," "not half bad," "useful," 
 and so on. Where the Englishman uses "cheeky 
 beggar," the American's imagination supplies 
 him with "too previous." The vulgar English- 
 man after eating heavily is "full up," while our 
 Western American, accustomed to the over- 
 loading of the old-time stage coach, replies to the 
 invitation to have more under the same circum- 
 stances, "ef I dew, I guess I'll hev to hang it on 
 the outside." Both these replies are Boeotian if 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 187 
 
 you please, but the latter is imaginative, a product 
 of the intellect, the former merely a porcine 
 grunt. 
 
 The American vulgarities of speech have a 
 touch of Homeric exaggeration, as when it is 
 said of anything very old that "it was old before 
 Adam was a rag-baby," or of a well-beaten ad- 
 versary that you "wiped up the floor with him." 
 Analogous with these are the Psalmist's "he wept 
 rivers of tears," or Virgil's : 
 
 " Primus abit, longeque ante omnia corpora Nisus 
 Emicat, et ventis et fulminis ocior alis." 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain in a speech in the House of 
 Commons speaks of a "put up job.'* The 
 Spectator even writes of the evidence proving 
 "that no man over forty can * stand the racket,'" 
 and when one finds "chestnut" in the sense of an 
 ancient joke, "bulldoze," "highfalutin" "Tam- 
 many methods," "not in it," and "caught on," in 
 the pages of reputable English journals, one 
 begins to wonder if these verbal prodigies of a 
 riotous rhetoric are after all so distasteful as is 
 pretended. 
 
 Nowhere in America does one hear so con- 
 stantly the nasal twang as in England. The 
 New Englander says "teown" for town, "keow" 
 for cow, "neow" for now, "yew deon't sai" for 
 
188 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 you don't say, and so do many of the old Eng- 
 landers. "Baiby" is the cockney for baby, 
 "plaice" the pronunciation of place, and these 
 and the millions of orphaned aitches are far 
 more common in England than in America, 
 where at least every aitch is given a good 
 home. 
 
 If it be true that the test of pure English speech 
 is that the speaker should give no indication by 
 colloquialisms, or by peculiarities of pronuncia- 
 tion of the place of his birth, or the university he 
 has attended, or the class to which he belongs, 
 then the best speakers of both countries are about 
 on a par. Lord Rosebery, Mr. John Morley, 
 now Lord Morley, Mr. James Bryce, and other 
 less known Englishmen I can mention, speak as 
 well as President Eliot of Harvard — the best 
 speaker of English I have ever heard — and the 
 late James Russell Lowell, the late George 
 William Curtis, and the late Charles Eliot 
 Norton, but no Englishman speaks better, and 
 very few as well. 
 
 The most defencelessly objectionable English 
 now spoken on the face of the globe is spoken 
 by Americans — Americans who are attempting 
 to speak like the English, for they speak neither 
 like cultivated Americans, nor like the well-bred 
 English. And let the American admit it to his 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 189 
 
 shame that while there are such epicene fellow 
 countrymen and countrywomen there are none 
 such among the English. At any rate, however 
 ridiculous his affectations, no Englishman tries 
 to speak like anybody but an Englishman, and 
 let this be said to his credit. They have their 
 eccentricities of speech, but they indulge in no 
 such folly as that. "Yes, skatin' would be 
 charmin' if it weren't for the freezin' stoppin' the 
 huntin'," says the smart lady, and Lord 
 Adolphus replies: "Yes, and ain't sleighin' 
 toppin' fun, except for the snowin' spoilin' the 
 skatin' .5^" The English in certain smart circles 
 make a rank affectation of careless speech, 
 probably to prove that their position is such that 
 they may speak as they please, but also because 
 the English as a race have never given much 
 thought, much credit or much reward to culture. 
 The governing classes of England have governed 
 by self-control, by common-sense, and by per- 
 sonal authority or superior character, but not by 
 erudition or mental brilliancy. 
 
 We in America perhaps overrate the value of 
 education. We have been too busy for much 
 culture, and so we exaggerate its importance. 
 Ignotum pro magnifico. Mr. Carnegie, who is 
 an uneducated man in the academic sense of the 
 word, litters his own and other lands with 
 
190 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 libraries. With no disrespect to him, he prob- 
 ably thinks he would have been a more useful 
 man had he been born to schools and libraries. I 
 doubt it. To know things makes one less afraid in 
 the world, just as in the case of a man in his social 
 relations, the more at home he is the more readily 
 he gives what he has to give, but the at-homeness 
 does not produce what he has not got. So with 
 education, it facilitates the use, and even ex- 
 ploits the use, of what one has, but it produces 
 little. Education is a good training for nascent 
 ability, and a good test of whether such abil- 
 ity exists at all, but it never of itself creates 
 ability. 
 
 The world has never been educated, so we in 
 our ignorance are trying to convert man by 
 training his mind. Laws were codified, and 
 libraries, and art, and culture, existed before 
 Moses. Indeed there was a code of laws in 
 Babylonia eight centuries before Moses. One 
 sometimes hears education spoken of in America 
 as though it were a discovery, somewhat like the 
 discovery of America itself by Columbus. It 
 may be indeed, that we are preparing a disap- 
 pointment for ourselves as a nation, in depending 
 so blithely upon universal education for our sal- 
 vation. That a good deal can be done without 
 it the history of England proves. Even the most 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 191 
 
 perfunctory and the most elementary education 
 is something of a novelty with them, and dates 
 back not many years. 
 
 Charity schools, as they were called, existed 
 as early as the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, but they were founded and controlled by a 
 private Society for Promoting Christian Knowl- 
 edge, and were undoubtedly conducted on narrow 
 lines, with the specific object of teaching the 
 children the catechism. 
 
 Early in the nineteenth century two individu- 
 als, one Lancaster, a Quaker — who, by the 
 way, afterward died in America — and a Rev. 
 Dr. Bell, started schools on their own account. 
 The Quaker, Lancaster, though an enthusiast, 
 was impracticable, and soon brought down upon 
 himself, and his schools, the violent opposition 
 of the church; and the Dr. Bell schools, under 
 the title: "National Society for Promoting the 
 Education of the Poor in the Principles of the 
 Church of England," now known as the "Na- 
 tional Society," were started as a result. This 
 quarrel between the Nonconformists and the 
 Churchmen, which began at that time, has con- 
 tinued to this day. Indeed it is this same con- 
 troversy which is even now, in this present (1908) 
 Parliament, making the passing of a satisfactory 
 Education Bill so diflficult. 
 
192 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 In 1833 the first Parliamentary grant was made 
 "for the purposes of education," and was only a 
 nieagre hundred thousand dollars, and even this 
 was cautiously and specially limited to the 
 building of school-houses. 
 
 In 1870 an act was passed establishing School 
 Boards. These Boards were to be elected by 
 the rate-payers, were given power to levy rates, 
 and to compel the attendance of the children. 
 The Voluntary Schools, schools largely supported 
 by the Church of England, went on as before. 
 Finally in 1903 the Act of 1870 was superseded, 
 the School Boards were abolished, and District 
 Local Education Authorities were established to 
 take over the management, both of the Board 
 Schools and the Voluntary Schools, the former 
 being now termed "provided," and the latter 
 "unprovided " schools. From this brief summary 
 it may be seen how very recently has England 
 deemed it a province of the State to control, 
 and to compel, national education. 
 
 This is not the record of a nation given over 
 to the things of the mind, or greatly impressed 
 by the advantages to be derived from universal 
 education. It is this attitude of constant and 
 satisfied indifference to such matters which has 
 often exasperated such men as Matthew Arnold, 
 for example, who maintained that the funda- 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 193 
 
 mental reason for many of England's errors, 
 "is our preference of doing to thinking." 
 
 Indeed Arnold went so far as to describe the 
 English social system as landing "modern com- 
 munities in the possessorship of an upper class 
 materialized, a middle class vulgarized, a lower 
 class brutalized." This was the superficial, not 
 to say the parochial, judgment of a man, who 
 leaned so far toward culture that he became 
 a prig. Education, trained intelligence, a wide 
 range of reading, are not in and of themselves 
 moral or efficient, or productive of comfort or 
 contentment. "Nine-tenths of the calamities 
 which have befallen the human race had no 
 other origin than the union of high intelligence 
 with low desires," writes Macaulay. Education 
 may engender sins of the mind, which are quite 
 as dangerous as sins of the body. A forger is 
 quite as dangerous to the community as a wife- 
 beater. 
 
 Many people look upon the question of educa- 
 tion as though there were but one answer to it. 
 This is by no means true. It is still a very open 
 question whether or not the over emphasis of the 
 intellectual side of the animal man is good for the 
 individual, or profitable to the race. The shovel, 
 the hoe, the pick and the plough are, after all, not 
 only the necessities for the foundation of civiliza- 
 
194 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 tion, but experience has not proved that their 
 employment is not also the most wholesome ex- 
 ercise for the vast majority of the human race. 
 We have yet to see an educated race which can 
 survive and hold its place in the world. Greece 
 to-day is represented in the world by an island 
 covered with crumpled monuments. However 
 that may be, there is no doubt, on the other hand, 
 that thus far England's superiority rests also upon 
 her grounded preference for doing rather than 
 thinking. 
 
 Voltaire maintained that: "On etudie les 
 livres en attendant qu'on etudie les hommes.'* 
 But the English have made man and men and 
 the best methods of controlling them their study 
 without bothering about any preliminary book- 
 ishness. Apparently they are not only proud 
 that they do not understand, but also proud that 
 they understand that it is better not to under- 
 stand. They have no patience with, and no 
 belief in, the restless intellectual activity of the 
 French, for example. A profound instinct arms 
 them against intelligence, which they recognize 
 as the greatest foe to action. Their predilection 
 for action and commercial enterprises has been 
 so lucrative that at the present moment the British 
 Empire -is fifty-three times the size of France, 
 fifty-two times the size of Germany, three and 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 195 
 
 a half times the size of the United States of Amer- 
 ica, and thrice the size of Europe, with treble 
 the population of all the Russias, and embraces 
 four continents, ten thousand islands, five hun- 
 dred promontories and two thousand rivers. 
 "Lud" was the god of commerce, who was 
 worshipped in England in Pagan times. Lud- 
 gate Hill is a remainder, and a reminder, of 
 "Lud." The Welsh still call London, "Caer 
 Ludd," or Lud's Town. Thus it is seen how 
 deep are the roots of their commercial su- 
 premacy. 
 
 As in their political affairs, so in intellectual \ 
 matters, they leave it to the few to govern and to 
 guide, reserving themselves to act behind them 
 when called upon, just as their ancestors the 
 Saxons did fifteen hundred years ago. If Mr. 
 Pierpont Morgan were an Englishman, it 
 would be impossible to imagine him as not in the 
 House of Lords, and also in the Cabinet, if he 
 would consent to serve there. England would 
 compel a man of such signal abilities, a great 
 financier, a Christian gentleman, and over and 
 over again a self-sacrificing patriot, to serve 
 her as a counsellor. How is it in America! 
 What President in our history thus far, except 
 perhaps Washington or Lincoln, would imperil 
 his popularity by asking him into his Cabinet! 
 
196 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Why not ? Simply because he is a rich banker. 
 Is England dull, or is America dull, in this 
 case ? 
 
 It is manifestly impossible to arrive at any 
 exact statement of the quantity and quality of 
 the reading-matter of a whole people. The likes 
 and dislikes, the hopes and ambitions, the secret 
 strivings and the mental processes of men, cannot 
 be represented by numerals. It is none the less 
 interesting to attempt to discover what the 
 English read, as a commentary upon this reputa- 
 tion of theirs for dulness. It is by no means 
 impossible so to collate facts and figures, and 
 to bring to bear subsidiary matters upon the 
 subject, as to arrive at a fair general impres- 
 sion. 
 
 There are, to begin with, a percentage of people 
 in every country who do not read at all, or very 
 little; there are others whose incomes and em- 
 ployments indicate that they probably limit them- 
 selves to a certain very light kind of reading; 
 while more useful still as a factor in such a prob- 
 lem, every nation has a certain personality of its 
 own, from which one may judge that this or that 
 special form of literature would be best suited to 
 satisfy its literary appetite. There is, too, in 
 England, a large proportion of the actual 
 readers, who read as a pastime, or as a soporific, 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 197 
 
 or as a dissipation. Their reading amounts to 
 little either one way or the other. 
 
 "Who reads 
 Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
 A spirit, and a judgment equal or superior. 
 Uncertain, and unsettled still remains 
 Deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself.' 
 
 When we come to divide up the population of 
 England and Wales, for the purpose of discover- 
 ing, even roughly, the number of persons whose 
 reading is of little consequence, we find that 
 something over fourteen millions fall into this 
 class, including over six million school children 
 under fourteen years of age; over a million 
 paupers ; a million nine hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand domestic servants ; three million laborers in 
 the agricultural, fishing and mining industries; 
 two millions engaged in textile manufactures or 
 employed as tailors, seamstresses, and shoe- 
 makers; to say nothing of over one hundred 
 thousand lunatics, and one hundred thousand 
 bar-maids. Although, even here, it is unsafe to 
 say that what these thirteen or fourteen millions 
 of people read has no influence upon themselves 
 or upon others, it is at least fair to conclude that 
 whatever that influence, subjective or objective, 
 may be, it is of small consequence. 
 
198 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 \This condition of things is due: first, to the 
 lack of free education facilities for children over 
 fourteen years of age — until very recently there 
 have been practically none; second, to the 
 almost entire lack of free public libraries, of 
 which later; third, to a well-defined, and to an 
 American strange, but widely held opinion that 
 the secular education of the masses does more 
 harm than good — an opinion held by many 
 among the masses themselves; fourth, to the 
 discouraging lead of the classes in all matters of 
 education over the even now heavily handicapped 
 masses, which leads these latter to look upon 
 their past and present condition as necessary and 
 permanent; fifth, to the profound national in- 
 stinct, which from highest to lowest, prefers doing 
 to thinking; which always, everywhere, shaves 
 down the ideal to the practical, and seeks a work- 
 ing hypothesisr| 
 
 The total number of schools receiving annual 
 grants is twenty thousand six hundred and 
 fifty-six. The number of children on the register 
 of the education department is six millions, of 
 whom five millions are, on an average, in daily 
 attendance. Of these only some fifty thousand 
 are over fourteen years of age. The reason for 
 this remarkably small number of children above 
 fourteen years of age is that this is the limit of 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 199 
 
 age when a child is required to attend school, and 
 also because, as has already been shown, there 
 is no school machinery, and very little encourage- 
 ment in England, for the education of poor 
 children who wish to go on beyond the provided 
 curriculum of children of fourteen. The Amer- 
 ican system of compulsory free education, by 
 means of which a lad may go on from primary 
 school to grammar school, from grammar school 
 to high school, and thence to college, without any 
 expense for tuition, and very little for text-books, 
 does not exist in England. 
 
 The Budget for 1907-8 estimates the revenue 
 at £144,190,000 and the expenditure at £140,- 
 757,000; of this only £200,000 was set aside for 
 educational grants, although in the Civil Service 
 items, under the general head of "Education, 
 Science and Art," is set aside the sum of £17,495,- 
 237. During the year 1904-5 the public ex- 
 penditure on elementary education is estimated 
 at £11,065,496 from the Imperial Exchequer; 
 £8,464,555 raised from Local Rates; £1,100,000 
 from Church of England and other Voluntary 
 School subscriptions ; £988,723 from Ragged and 
 other charity schools. The distribution of this 
 fund is such that only a small percentage of the 
 population of Great Britain are even in the way 
 of fitting themselves to read anything but the 
 
200 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 most lamentably light and elementary literature. 
 As a consequence of this policy, the percentage 
 of adults who are, at least for all purposes of this 
 discussion, practically illiterate, is probably very 
 high. There are, unfortunately, no figures in the 
 census returns which enable one to say exactly 
 what that percentage is. But exact figures are 
 not necessary. This is not a problem of mathe- 
 matics; it is a problem of temperament. Over- 
 whelming evidence is enough, without nicety of 
 computation. The Home Office in 1893 re- 
 ported that of four and a half million total votes 
 polled one hundred and thirty-five thousand 
 were illiterate. If one voter in every thirty-four 
 is illiterate, one may be quite sure that, including 
 the remaining women and children and non- 
 voters, the percentage is very much higher; and 
 these figures would be still further borne out did 
 one care to make a calculation from the facts 
 already given in this chapter, concerning the 
 signing of the marriage register; and also from 
 the fact that even now ten men in an hundred, and 
 twelve women in an hundred in England and 
 Wales ; and twenty-three men in an hundred, and 
 twenty-five women in an hundred in Ireland, can 
 not sign the marriage register. How many more 
 are practically unable to read and write! 
 
 A phase of the subject, that from an American 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 201 
 
 point of view deserves repeated notice, is, that a ' 
 large number of intelligent people in England ; 
 are altogether opposed to free general education. \ 
 They are the Conservative, not to say the Tory 
 Old Guard in politics and religion, who hold that 
 the children, as of old, in each parish, should be 
 taught to read and write, and to say their cate- 
 chism, in the schools, under the supervision of 
 the clergy, and then earn a living as did their 
 forefathers. This system, which to all intents 
 and purposes, in spite of the strides in the last 
 few years, is still in vogue, explains why so many 
 well-educated German youths are employed in 
 London, to the dismay of their English rivals. 
 One may lay aside for the nonce the ever-present 
 bugaboo of the statistician, which is the fear of 
 generalizing from incomplete details, to assert 
 without reservation that it would be difficult to 
 find an American who is utterly opposed to free 
 education for the people, so long as it is not 
 carried to a foolish length. In England, on the 
 contrary, there is almost a party of reactionaries, 
 with many of whom I have discussed this ques- 
 tion, who scout the very idea that the education 
 of the lower classes has benefited either those 
 who have received it or those who have bestowed 
 it. They point to the situation, as well they may, 
 of a nation which, while paying little attention to 
 
202 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 technical education, and much attention to char- 
 acter and religious observance, has beaten out 
 all rivals in the race for supremacy and respect 
 among the nations. They hold to the Old 
 Testament view, that corn, wine and children 
 are the fruit of the formal. God-fearing people, 
 with which education has nothing to do. 
 
 This attitude of mind, it must be emphasized 
 here, is not one of arrogance. It has no flavor 
 of superiority in the sense that these people feel 
 that the lower classes are unworthy of notice, and 
 incapable of becoming like themselves. We have 
 already seen, in our discussion of the make-up 
 of the House of Lords, that this is not the English 
 spirit. At the bottom of this feeling is the 
 thoroughly English instinct that what a man can- 
 not earn, or get for himself, he does not deserve. 
 They are not believers in any of the modern 
 nostrums for the artificial stimulating of the body 
 politic, under the generic title of socialism. The 
 socialistic section of the labor party makes more 
 noise than progress. On the other hand, no people 
 in the world give more heartily or more generously 
 to those who succeed, no matter from what social 
 layer they come, than do the English. They have 
 no weakness of logic and principle to prevent 
 their worship of God and Mammon at one and 
 the same and all the time. The Jew, the fop, 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 203 
 
 the novelist, the cynic Disraeli, becomes Prime 
 Minister and Earl of Beaconsfield. The able 
 man may be what he will, come from whence 
 he may — if he can serve England, he always 
 has of her best. There is no false, no foolish, 
 pride in their attitude toward this question of 
 education. It is purely practical; all a matter 
 of personal efficiency. 
 
 The following figures show better than any 
 expression of opinion the difference between 
 England and America in this matter. The cen- 
 sus of 1891 counted 606,505 men and 765,917 
 women of sixty-five years and upward in England 
 and Wales, or a total of 1,372,422, of whom 
 401,904, or nearly one-third, received parish 
 relief. Over against this set the other statement, 
 that in 1874 in a House of Commons of 658 mem- 
 bers, 235 of them were Oxford or Cambridge 
 men, and 100 of them, or six and a half per cent, 
 of them, were graduates of Eton. In the last 
 Parliament of 670 members, 371, or more than 
 one-half, were graduates of the two great uni- 
 versities ; while in the United States Senate, at the 
 same date, there were 14, and in the House of 
 Representatives 22, graduates of our dozen more 
 prominent colleges, or 36 in all. 
 
 It would be difficult to put it more clearly if one 
 piled facts and figures upon facts and figures for 
 
204 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 page after page that in England the classes are 
 educated and rule, while the masses have little 
 voice in administrative matters, and fall toward 
 the end of their lives into helpless and rheumatic 
 dependence; while in America the general aver- 
 age of prosperity is higher, though men of first 
 rate ability are fewer. To put it in another fash- 
 ion, if we lined up man for man, our American 
 standard, whether physical, moral, or material, 
 would be immeasurably higher than theirs; but 
 if we lined up our million best men against the 
 million best Englishmen, we should not reach 
 their standard, nor, for that matter, would a 
 million men from any other nation in the world. 
 In physical courage and pluck we should be their 
 equals, but in all-round efficiency they are supe- 
 rior. Let us not forget, however, that they are a 
 thousand years old, we are an hundred years old 
 — we are in our first youth, they are in their 
 prime. 
 
 We have noted the influence of the climate 
 upon other features of English life ; it has also a 
 notable influence upon this matter of reading. 
 The mild and equable temperature of England, 
 which permits one to be out-of-doors, and conse- 
 quently to take part in some form of sport or 
 labor all the year round, lessens materially the 
 time given to reading. Other things being equal. 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 205 
 
 the inhabitants of a mild climate will read less 
 than people who are perforce kept in-doors many 
 weeks of the year by great heat or intense cold. 
 No country in the world has such a never- 
 ending round of sports in which so large a 
 proportion of the population take part as has 
 England — bicycling and motoring all the year 
 round; hunting from October to April; racing 
 from early spring to late autumn; golf, which has 
 developed from a game into a widely prevalent 
 disease, all the year round; cricket and tennis 
 from April till October; shooting from August 
 till January; foot-ball, played, alas, by profes- 
 sionals, but as many as two hundred thousand 
 people in attendance at one game, from Septem- 
 ber till May ; and, besides these, coursing, fishing, 
 boating, and a long et cwtera of other pastimes. 
 Nor are these sports confined to the rich and 
 idle, or even to the well-to-do alone. Again I 
 repeat, England is the most democratic country 
 in the world, where the rights of the individual 
 are more respected, where the individual has 
 more of personal freedom, and where the indi- 
 vidual is less trammelled by artificial barriers of 
 birth or class jealousy, in his efforts to rise, than 
 anywhere else in Christendom; for to miss this 
 characteristic is to lose the explanation of many 
 apparent anomalies. Aristocracy exists only 
 
206 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 where few people are free. Where every one is 
 free, where every one feels himself to have aristo- 
 cratic privileges, there is no aristocracy. 
 
 It is, strange to say, in America, not in Eng- 
 land, that one hears much talk about the tailor 
 grandfather of A, the shoemaker grandfather of 
 B, the washerwoman grandmother of C, and so 
 on. In England his lordship, the parson, the 
 squire, and the butcher, the baker, the candle- 
 stick-maker, go galloping across the fields to- 
 gether after the hounds, and the best man 
 among them is he with his head and his heart 
 up, and his hands and heels down, and a good 
 one under him. The meeting-place is adver- 
 tised in the local papers, and it is not necessary 
 to wear pink to join in the sport; and one may 
 see such a mingling of classes on terms of purely 
 horsemanship equality as one seldom sees in 
 America, and never in any country on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe. 
 
 The same is true of the cricket field, where the 
 county magnate, the parson, the young squires 
 of the neighborhood, play under the captaincy 
 of some local tradesman's son, proving again 
 that the genuine aristocrat is the best democrat 
 and that the snob and the prig lack something, 
 if not everything, of being gentlemen. A man 
 must always be much more what he is than what 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 207 
 
 he has. The danger in a prosperous and com- 
 mercially active civilization is that we may for- 
 get this, and begin to see men with distorted 
 vision as having much, rather than as being true. 
 England has somehow escaped this. Indeed, 
 practically the only people either in England or 
 America whom one hears talking much of what 
 it is, or what it is not, to be a gentleman, are they 
 who secretly suspect their own claims to the title. 
 The very first requisite of the gentleman is that 
 he should have forgotten at least an hundred 
 years ago that he is one. 
 
 It may give some idea of the part played by 
 out-door life in England to say, that it is difficult 
 to find an Englishman between eighteen and 
 sixty-five in fair health and not supported by the 
 rates who is not a performer at some kind of 
 sport or interested in some phase of it. Of the 
 nearly seven hundred reviews and magazines of 
 a non-religious character printed in England, one 
 in six is largely devoted to some form of out- 
 of-door sport or pastime. Between 1880-85, 
 according to a private index kept in the British 
 Museum, there were 266 books published on the 
 one subject of sport and athletics, and between 
 1885-90, 412. During the ten years ending 
 1907, there were published 2,024 under the gen- 
 eral head of Travel ; 569 under the general head 
 
208 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of Geographical Research; 5,498 under the 
 general head of History; and 1,059 Biographies, 
 and over 1,200 books dealing with questions of 
 Trade. This shows the general trend of thought 
 and action. Their serious literature deals largely 
 with men and the doings of men. 
 I In a word, John Bull loves the fresh air. He 
 1 is a sportsman, an athlete, a soldier, sailor, 
 \ traveller, a colonist rather than a student, and 
 ( all the figures bear one out in making the state- 
 I ment. During those trying days in the Crimea 
 ' these sport-loving "young barbarians" were "all 
 at play'* when they were not fighting; racing 
 their ponies, playing cricket, and off shooting 
 such game as there was. One family in Eng- 
 land, the Pelhams, have hunted the Brocklesby 
 pack of hounds for more than one hundred and 
 seventy-five years. 
 I While Italy has twenty-one universities, Ger- 
 I many twenty, and France fifteen, England has 
 only seven. On the other hand, the value of the 
 sea-borne commerce of Great Britain and her 
 colonies is double that of all European countries 
 combined, or a total of imports and exports for 
 the year 1906 of $5,344,120,960. Of the immense 
 possessions, and the enormous population, over 
 which they exercise control, we have already 
 written. In addition, it is calculated — though 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 209 
 
 I mention these figures diflfidently as more or 
 less guess-work — that they own foreign secur- 
 ities to the amount of over $3,000,000,000. 
 
 A nation of students does not exploit itself 
 along those lines. These people are the Romans 
 of modern times, slow, vigorous, law-loving, law- 
 abiding, and colonizers of the best type, but not ,1 
 students. They are contented, confident. Their 
 disregard of philosophy proves their happiness. 
 What they are, and what they have, satisfies 
 them. It is the unhappy man who indulges in 
 thought, and dreams himself and others into non- 
 existent situations, only to come back to be dis- 
 appointed by the real world. These people live 
 always in the real world. 
 
 When it is said that the English are, as com- 
 pared with the Germans, or even with the Amer- 
 icans, a non-reading race, we have still facts and 
 figures to give concerning the reading population. 
 To begin with, the census of 1901 for England and 
 Wales groups under the heading. Professional 
 Class, 972,685 persons, and of these, it may be 
 supposed, that all are readers. Most startling of 
 all, despite the fact that there are over a million 
 more women than men in England, there are 
 under the head of Unoccupied Class 1,977,283 
 males and 9,017,834 females in England and 
 Wales; 264,893 males and 1,198,618 females in 
 
210 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Scotland, and 786,097 males and 1,708,861 
 females in Ireland, or out of the total population 
 of Great Britain and Ireland of 43,219,788 there 
 are 14,953,586 persons who have no occupation, 
 or one-third of the population. It goes without 
 saying that "unoccupied" here does not mean 
 "idle," since it is precisely from among the unoc- 
 cupied classes that the rulers of the Empire 
 come. This large unoccupied class in England, 
 larger than that of any other country in the world, 
 is due to the overcrowding, 445 persons to the 
 square mile in 1881; 497 in 1891; and 558 in 
 1901 ; to the competition, which forces people to 
 be conservative, and to be satisfied with a small 
 but secure income ; to the willingness of the Eng- 
 lishman to live on a small but secure income, if 
 he may be independent and hunt and shoot a 
 little, and play games ; to the fact that there are 
 so many idle men in England for companions; 
 also because there is nothing derogatory as with 
 us in having no imperative occupation; and to 
 the civil service system which pensions off the 
 servants of the various departments of the State, 
 there being some 175,000 persons in England 
 living upon State pensions. 
 
 In this connection it is suggestive to find that 
 there are more than 140,000 members of London 
 clubs alone, and we are not far wrong in guessing 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 211 
 
 that one man in every thirty of voting age and 
 upward is a member of a club, not including 
 workingmen's clubs, free reading-rooms, and the 
 like. These, and many more besides, are the 
 devourers of the newspapers, sporting papers, 
 and the magazines. And this brings one to the 
 subject of the position held by the newspapers in 
 the national life of England. 
 
 The newspaper is a member of the family in 
 every reputable household in England and regu- 
 larly comes to breakfast with them. Already in 
 1854 the circulation of the Times was nearly 
 52,000 ; of the Morning Advertiser 8,000 ; of the 
 Daily News 4,000; of the Morning Herald 
 4,000; of the Chronicle and Post each 3,000. 
 The London Times was until lately a sort of 
 eldest son among newspapers, and Punch the 
 jolly bachelor uncle who made occasional visits. 
 But the number and influence of other news- 
 papers have vastly increased. The Times no 
 longer carries the weight that it did, and party 
 newspapers are playing a larger and larger role. 
 The sensational, "up-to-date" newspaper still 
 fi.nds it diflScult to make headway in Eligland. 
 No one cares apparently to devour the happen- 
 ings of every hour, whether true or false. It is 
 easier and cheaper to wait till to-morrow and get 
 the truth. The English are lacking, too, in that 
 
212 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 nervous obsession of occupation which drives 
 the American to read trash in the train rather 
 than to do nothing. 
 
 Just as men have been obHged to adapt them- 
 selves to hfe in great cities, so whole populations 
 to-day are striving to adapt themselves mentally 
 to the omnipresent, omniprinting newspaper. 
 The dust and turmoil and excitement of great 
 aggregations of population, the constant strain 
 on eyes, and ears, and throat, and nerves, have 
 changed the physique of mankind. The dusty 
 chatter of the newspapers is working upon the 
 mental make-up of mankind in much the same 
 way. Too much comes pelting upon minds un- 
 trained to analyze and incapable of sifting the 
 grain from the chaff. The more generally edu- 
 cated, and the more generally curious mentally, 
 are those who suffer most from this dust-cloud 
 of the newspapers. Men who are only intelligent 
 enough to keep in one way, and to do one task, 
 and to serve one master, are diverted, excited, 
 made discontented, and led astray, by this enor- 
 mous variety of news, which comes to them every 
 day, but which concerns them not at all. How 
 true this is is seen in the curious temptation to 
 murder, suicide and crimes of all kinds which fol- 
 lows upon the prolonged and detailed discussion 
 of such matters in the newspapers. Many peo- 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 213 
 
 pie are like children, to whom it would be a mercy 
 to keep them in ignorance of many of the grosser 
 happenings which fill the newspapers. Here 
 again the duller, less curious people have an 
 advantage. They are not diverted, they are not 
 excited, not impelled hither and thither to dis- 
 connected action and thought, which leads no- 
 where, and tempts men to the discussion, and to 
 the handling, of matters for which they lack both 
 experience and capacity. Some great statesman 
 may have the courage in these democratic days 
 to say, or perhaps some great physiological 
 psychologist to demonstrate, that certain occi- 
 dental peoples are suffering from having been 
 educated too fast! They are trying too many 
 remedies at once, like a child in a sweet-shop ; or 
 they are glorying in political panaceas which 
 were tried and found wanting centuries ago, but 
 they do not know quite enough to know it. This 
 alert intelligence working in a cloud is more 
 dangerous than ignorance, where the real prog- 
 ress of a people is concerned. Here again, the 
 English, consciously or unconsciously, have suf- 
 fered less than any other first-class modern 
 nation from this distracting power of the press, 
 and for the reasons we have outlined. 
 
 Englishmen, however, still take their news- 
 papers into their confidence and have a naive way 
 
214 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of writing to them on all sorts of subjects. If an 
 Englishman rows down the Thames and stops 
 for luncheon at an inn and is overcharged, he 
 promptly writes to his newspaper, and later on, 
 his first letter is followed by others, in which the 
 comparative merits and cost of light luncheons 
 on the Continent, in Canada, in Central Asia, in 
 Seringapatam, in Kamchatka, and everywhere 
 else where Englishmen have eaten and drunk — 
 and where have they not eaten and drunk ? — is 
 discussed at length. This goes on till we have a 
 complete international history of mid-day gas- 
 tronomies. Then the editor writes at the bot- 
 tom, "We cannot continue this correspondence," 
 and the affair is over. Very often it is delightful 
 reading. 
 
 If a horse stumbles and falls in Rotten Row, 
 there are letters on the subject which go into the 
 matter of road-building, modern horsemanship, 
 best methods of shoeing horses, and the like, 
 with quotations from Xenophon — who by the 
 way wrote some of the best pages ever written on 
 the subject — from Virgil, and anecdotes of acci- 
 dents that happened half a century ago, and 
 so on. 
 
 Half a dozen Englishmen go to Homburg. 
 Finding that the golf course there is not to their 
 taste, they sign a round-robin on the subject, and 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 215 
 
 send it to the Times. They write letters on the 
 lynching of negroes in our Southern States, on 
 the subject of our banking system, our methods 
 of finance, our presidential candidates, our hotels, 
 our iced water, our over-heated trains, our lack 
 of swift justice to criminals; some of them good, 
 some foolish, but all with that ponderous sense 
 that the Englishman is responsible for the con- 
 temporary auditing of the accounts of the Day of 
 Judgment. The world belongs to him who takes 
 it, and the Englishman takes it with a confidence 
 and nonchalance that one cannot help admiring. 
 This habit results in a sort of signal system to all 
 Englishmen everywhere. This is condemned, 
 that is praised. The Englishman is warned 
 against this, and recommended to do that, and 
 so he swings around the globe noting everything, 
 criticising everything, telling his countrymen 
 about everything. He feels somehow that his 
 supervision keeps things in order, and makes 
 things easier for every other Englishman. Per- 
 haps it does! 
 
 On the other hand, the better class English 
 newspapers do not indulge in rash suppositions, 
 hasty generalizations, uncertain guesses at proba- 
 ble future happenings, and the daily exploitation 
 of the personal affairs of notorious nobodies. 
 And one may say diffidently that this is distinctly 
 
216 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 preferable to the methods of certain of our own 
 journals, which have dropped into miscellaneous 
 meddling, in their rage for news. 
 
 If Mr. Balfour, for example, were to go abroad 
 for a holiday, it would be considered contempti- 
 ble to chronicle his doings and dinings, and 
 absolutely brutal and boorish to write particulars 
 of the dress and behavior of his sister, or his wife, 
 if he had one. The sense of fair play of a nation 
 of sportsmen would not permit an editor to 
 torment even his enemy from behind a woman's 
 petticoats. 
 
 So far as possible the newspaper maintains a 
 strictly impersonal point of view. There is plenty 
 of discussion and plenty of criticism of men and 
 measures, but rarely any attributing of mean, or 
 dishonorable, or interested motives. There is no 
 attempt, as in the French journals, to be epi- 
 grammatic, smart, to make a hit, no matter what 
 it costs in dignity and truthfulness. 
 
 These Englishmen fight one another sturdily 
 enough in the press, and on the floor of the 
 House of Commons, but personally they are 
 friendly. They never dream of disgracing jour- 
 nalism or politics, or of making their country 
 ridiculous, just for the momentary pleasure of 
 planting a barb where it will rankle most in an 
 opponent's body. "My brother and I quarrel. 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 217 
 
 but it is my brother and I against the world!" 
 It is ground into them that no private affair, no 
 hurt of their own, no enemy whom they wish to 
 punish, can for a moment excuse any harm they 
 do their country, in indulging personal spite. I 
 do not maintain for a moment that this high 
 code of breeding is never broken, but it is to their 
 honor that this is their code at all, that this is 
 their ideal. 
 
 It is amusing to see their stupefaction, their 
 serious open-eyed wonder, when such a politician 
 as Keir Hardie breaks away from their traditions, 
 and foments, or is alleged to foment, discord in 
 the ranks of the English possessions. They are 
 studying the problem now, as I write, but with 
 no solution in view. An Englishman who is an 
 enemy of England, as England has always been, 
 is a strange creature, and as yet they have settled 
 upon no plan for dealing with him. 
 
 The women, who at the moment, are asserting 
 their right to the ballot, and who are using fan- 
 tastic methods to advertise, and to bring to the 
 attention of the public, their demands, are treated 
 both by statesmen and policemen with a bored 
 kind of patience. It is annoying, but hardly 
 worth while taking seriously, they seem to think. 
 Englishmen generally, but secretly, hold the 
 opinion of their greatest living novelist: "The 
 
218 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 last thing man will civilize is woman!" The 
 average Englishman would add, particularly 
 foreign women. He knows, too, by an unique 
 experience of conquest, that the last resort, the 
 final tribunal, in the settlement of questions 
 between men, or between nations, is force; and 
 that therefore women have no right to a final 
 voice in questions that they are physically de- 
 barred from settling, in the only way that they 
 can be settled, in a world such as it is at present. 
 Here again he refuses to be led astray by either 
 theory or sentiment. He knows the fact, and by 
 hard experience; that is enough. 
 
 So fundamental is this feeling about England 
 wherever her flag floats, about Englishmen 
 wherever they are ; so imbued are they with pride 
 in themselves and their country, that even 
 recognized evils are handled gently and circum- 
 spectly, and, above all, slowly, lest harm be done. 
 There are of course flippant, careless journals in 
 England, but the bulk of them mirror the senti- 
 ments above described, and are, even though 
 they differ widely politically, always an aid to the 
 State, and champions of their brothers, right or 
 wrong, against the world. 
 
 Although there is no way of knowing with 
 exactness the comparative amount of newspaper 
 reading in England and America, the fact of the 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 219 
 
 wholesome and patriotic influence of the British 
 press must pass unquestioned. Though the best 
 of the English journals assume an attitude of fair 
 play, there is always a tinge of superiority in their 
 comments upon foreign affairs, particularly when 
 the foreigner chances to be a political or trade 
 rival. They choose as news from America, or 
 from Germany, the less flattering happenings, 
 and give them, whether with or without comment, 
 in a way to suggest inferiority. This is the gen- 
 tlemanly way of causing irritation, but it is none 
 the less effectively exasperating. In spite of an 
 assumption of friendliness, there is no press in 
 Europe which does so much to humiliate Amer- 
 ica and the Americans as the English press. It 
 may be intentional, or it may be merely the feel- 
 ing that between friends one may be more frank 
 than with other people; but the fact remains, 
 and can be easily proved by copious quotations, 
 were it worth while. I make no affirmations as 
 to motives, since these pages are written that we 
 may understand, and distinctly not to further 
 misunderstanding. 
 
 The Englishman takes his newspaper much 
 more seriously than does the American, first, 
 because his newspaper is as a rule more accu- 
 rately and seriously written, — certain of their 
 journals, the Spectator and Times for example, are 
 
220 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 unimpeachable in their style and temper — and 
 notably because of the wider sweep of interest, 
 and the broader horizon offered to the English 
 newspaper reader, due almost wholly to the fact 
 that all the news, and every interest of the vast 
 British Empire, is centred, not in forty-eight 
 different states, but in London. 
 
 Such a newspaper as the Observer ^ which 
 appears only on the Sunday, is one of the best 
 newspapers I know. It is well printed on good 
 paper, its news is carefully chosen with an eye 
 to the greatest variety of interests, and its edi- 
 torial matter is sane and well informed. As a 
 model of brilliant editing it ranks with one of our 
 own best newspapers, the Sun. On the other 
 hand, there is no newspaper, French, German or 
 American, so thoroughly vulgar, so grossly, some- 
 times even so licentiously, coarse, as one English 
 newspaper devoted mainly to racing. It is with 
 astonishment that one sees it for sale on the pub- 
 lic news-stands, and on the tables in respectable 
 houses. In Paris one sees illustrations and reads 
 paragraphs in the papers which at first make the 
 Puritan-bred gasp, but one says to oneself, this 
 is Paris! But to see a newspaper whose front 
 page blossoms with the most disgusting allusions 
 and the most lascivious jokes sold in England on 
 all the news-stands leaves one bewildered. Does 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 221 
 
 this prudish England not understand these jokes, 
 or does she not care, or is it possible that the 
 English at bottom enjoy this lowest form of 
 stable-boy humor ? 
 
 The English newspapers are, therefore, to be 
 taken seriously into account when one estimates 
 what, and to what purpose, English people read. 
 Their ephemeral intellectual provender is heavier 
 than ours, and, be it said, more instructive and 
 less exciting. 
 
 Englishmen are easily the most numerous, and 
 the most careful, travellers in the world. Men 
 who hope to make journalism their profession, or 
 men training themselves for public office, look 
 upon a trip around the world as a necessary part 
 of their curriculum. This reacts upon their news- 
 papers and magazines, which receive weighty 
 communications from experts wherever a British 
 interest is threatened, and whenever the British 
 lion's paw is suspected of being used to roast 
 somebody else's chestnuts. Nothing does more 
 to keep up the tone of the daily press than this 
 intimate and serious interest that so many Eng- 
 lishmen take in their newspapers ; while the wide 
 and varied interests of Imperial control — there 
 is seldom a month when the British army, or 
 British diplomacy, or the British navy is not 
 actively at work in some part of these wide domin- 
 
222 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ions — give to the newspapers an heroic cast, 
 and a dramatic concern, which in themselves 
 supply the place of other literature. It is the 
 policy, too, of many of them to maintain corres- 
 pondents in the various capitals, who are not 
 only men of sound training, but men of breed- 
 ing and culture. They have, as a result, unusual 
 facilities for keeping Englishmen at home well 
 posted. It is a pity that our great journals do 
 not do the same. An intelligent, well-bred cor- 
 respondent abroad is better than countless cables. 
 Therefore it is that, in casting about to discover 
 what the English people read, one gives great 
 weight to the fact that they are a nation who take 
 their newspapers seriously, and, in reading them, 
 become possessed of a great variety of informa- 
 tion, and in the main accustomed to a sound style 
 of writing and thinking. There are something 
 under two thousand newspapers published in 
 England and Wales. 
 
 Judging, then, from these diverse facts brought 
 to bear upon what the English read, what are we 
 led to conclude ? [.What would such a fellow as 
 John Bull read } Newspapers, magazines, nov- 
 els, particularly novels of sport, adventure and 
 j travel; and next travels, history, biography, ex- 
 \ ploration, and then, because the bulk of the 
 j English are Puritan still, books of a religious 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 223 
 
 character. An analytical table of books pub- 
 lished in London in a given year shows the 
 following — 
 
 NEW BOOKS NEW EDITIONS 
 
 Theology 459 74 
 
 Novels and Fiction 518 104 
 
 Political Economy and Trade .... 71 14 
 
 Voyages, Geography 247 74 
 
 History, Biography 269 65 
 
 Poetry, Drama 197 37 
 
 Belles Lettres, Essays ...... 96 11 
 
 Sport 75 
 
 Out of the list of books published this same 
 year, 1,435 of them were devoted to fiction, 
 travel, biography, history and sport. 
 
 To an American, particularly if he live in be- 
 libraried Massachusetts, it must seem strange 
 that in writing of what John Bull reads no use is 
 made of library statistics. When it is said that 
 the first rate-supported library in England was 
 opened to the public only in 1852, and that there 
 are now only some two hundred such libraries, 
 it becomes apparent how small a factor this is. 
 In the state of Massachusetts alone 248 of the 
 351 cities and towns have free public libraries, 
 and there are besides 23,000 school libraries in 
 the United States, containing 45,000,000 volumes. 
 A careful calculation made some few years ago 
 showed that in 106 of the total of 165 lending 
 libraries in England there were 389,698 net bor- 
 
224 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 rowers, and of them, on the average, nearly 80 
 per cent, called for fiction and juvenile literature, 
 and therefore what some 78,000 readers in the 
 free lending libraries read, even if one could 
 know, would be of small service in showing what 
 the English people read. Mudie's Select Library 
 and Smith's Lending Library have over 60,000 
 subscribers and probably 250,000 readers, but 
 here again one-third of the books they distribute 
 are novels. 
 
 In short, the only method which results, or can 
 result, in anything like a satisfactory answer to the 
 question as to the reading tendencies of the Eng- 
 lish people is the broad method of dealing with 
 the nation as a whole. Doubtless there is here 
 or there a governess writing a "Jane Eyre"; 
 or a school-boy wasting his time in preparing to 
 write a "Vanity Fair"; or a dull boy at his 
 arithmetic who will some day be called The 
 Grand Old Man and make poetry of future bud- 
 gets ; or a young fop in Piccadilly who may seem 
 to belong to the class of non-readers, and wear his 
 rings outside his gloves, and yet who is destined 
 to receive £10,000 for another "Lothair," and 
 to make his Queen an Empress — who knows ? 
 At any rate I am not so enamored of my figures 
 that I am not willing, like Luther's school-master, 
 to lift my hat to these possibilities. 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 225 
 
 The countless exceptions to any and every 
 rule, the undoubted prowess of English scholars 
 and statesmen, and the maintenance of an un- 
 commonly high average tone in matter, manner 
 and method of the English newspapers and peri- 
 odicals, prove fairly enough that, though the 
 English nation is not a nation of readers, there 
 must be a percentage, by no means small, who 
 demand and who succeed in getting a high class 
 of reading for their daily consumption. 
 
 On the other hand, it is equally fair to say that 
 the 38,000,000 inhabitants of a small island, who 
 offer next to no facilities for the higher education 
 of the poorer classes, who have over a million 
 paupers, over a million and a half of domestic 
 servants, three million out-of-door laborers, two 
 million and a half working in mills, factories and 
 shops, and who yet have conquered and rule a 
 population in partibus outnumbering them twelve 
 to one, cannot be spoken of as a nation of readers, 
 students, thinkers. 
 
 In short, the great bulk of the English people 
 read nothing, literally nothing; he who knows 
 something of rural England will agree to this ; 
 the casual and occasional reader reads, as we 
 have shown, fiction, biography, history, travels 
 and no small amount of theology in a diluted 
 form ; the large middle class read and trust their 
 
226 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 periodical literature and their newspapers; the 
 students and real readers, who feed their minds 
 as other men feed their bodies, read with more 
 thoroughness and patience than any men I know. 
 The preliminary examinations for any college 
 at Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or Dublin are 
 trifling as compared with the entrance examina- 
 tions at Harvard, but, on the other hand, both the 
 classical and mathematical men who take the 
 highest rank in England go through an amount 
 of reading that our men hardly dream of. In 
 America there is a very widespread education of 
 the hare ; in England there is, confined to narrow 
 limits, a very thorough-going education of the 
 tortoise. 
 
 But here again, what does this prove.? Who 
 has not known men with enough university 
 sheepskin to make a wardrobe, who were sterile 
 critics, or vacillating incompetents! Who for- 
 gets how small were the libraries and the early 
 opportunities of Washington, Lincoln, Grant and 
 Cleveland ! This silent, non-gesticulating, steady 
 non-reading race, who have given, until very 
 lately, almost no attention to general education, 
 are very often spoken of as dull. On the surface, 
 to quicker, more responsive, more genial peoples, 
 this seems true. But beware of believing it ! It 
 is one of those boomerang errors that does harm 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 227 
 
 to a rival when he least, and where he least, ex- 
 pects it. Their orderliness, their respect for law, 
 their genius for give and take, and their national 
 solidarity, which thus far have kept them well 
 to the fore among the peoples of the earth, are not 
 the result of dulness in any intelligent use of the 
 word. It is one of those widespread misappre- 
 hensions well worth a chapter by itself to explain, 
 and to contradict, for the benefit of both the 
 enemies and the friends of England. 
 
 Indeed, the most interesting and the most 
 notable commentary upon this phase of English 
 life is the present attitude of both the German 
 and the French better class parents. It is as- 
 tonishing to hear a group of well-to-do German 
 fathers stating that they intend to send their sons 
 to an English public school. Why, one asks. 
 Out of the mass of reasons given one disen- 
 tangles the fact that the Germans are beginning 
 to see that they educate their youths, but they do 
 not train them. The English public school-boy 
 is governing all over the world, while the' German 
 boy serves him as a clerk. The Englishman has 
 a way of gaining the confidence, the affection 
 even, of stranger races, and of handling them and 
 governing them with least friction. As one Ger- 
 man said: "We must produce men who can gov- 
 ern, if we expect to colonize successfully." The 
 
228 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 German schools do not do this. The same is 
 true of the French schools. Recently I have 
 been travelling by road in a leisurely fashion 
 through France. One sees school-houses every- 
 where, games, sports, evidences of private wealth, 
 nowhere. The English boy would be as a child 
 in an examination room compared to French or 
 German boys of his own age. But he is far 
 more to be depended upon, a far more compan- 
 ionable person, and much more at home in the 
 world. The French and German youths are 
 stuffed to the brim with book-learning, while the 
 English lad is in many respects a man. If the 
 three of them go out to the colonies we all know 
 what happens. The French boy keeps the books, 
 the German boy attends to the foreign corre- 
 spondence, and the English boy manages both. 
 A great German manufacturer who has a number 
 of Englishmen as heads of different departments 
 said naively: *' Somehow these Englishmen seem 
 to get on better with the work-people." 
 
 The same thing is true of the Englishman in 
 India. The India Babu, or educated native, is 
 intelligent, often brilliantly educated, but he is 
 hopeless as a governor. He lacks initiative, he 
 fears, and wilts under responsibility, and is unfit 
 to deal out justice. I have no brief for the Eng- 
 lishman, but one must give him his due in this 
 
ARE THE ENGLISH DULL? 229 
 
 respect. The secret of his success is, in part at 
 least, due to his training by men in his pubhc 
 schools; in the rough welding he gets from his 
 school-fellows, which hardens him, and at the 
 same time softens him in his treatment of others, 
 and which knocks any idea of bumptiousness or 
 boasting out of him, and makes him test himself 
 and others by deeds and trustworthiness rather 
 than by words and book-learning. He may well 
 say to the German and the Frenchman, if this be 
 dulness, make the most of it! 
 
 Nonetheless, one must answer the question 
 categorically, the question which is the subject 
 of this chapter. To the average foreigner, the 
 average Englishman and Englishwoman is dull. 
 This dulness, as has been explained, is their 
 safety and their success. You may call the chess- 
 board black, you may call it white. It resolves 
 itself into a question of taste. To the American, 
 to the Frenchman, to the quick-witted of all 
 nations, the English are distinctly dull, but out of 
 this root of dulness has grown an overshadowing 
 national tree. 
 
VI 
 
 SPORT 
 
 IF one were writing of France, of Germany, 
 of Italy, of Russia, of Spain, no one would 
 notice the omission of a chapter on sport. 
 A few pages upon hunting and shooting in 
 France, of which there is still a certain amount; 
 upon the students' duelling, and the hunting of 
 the wild boar in Germany; upon the shooting 
 over the enormous preserves in Hungary; upon 
 big-game shooting in some parts of Russia, and 
 upon bull-fighting in Spain, would suffice to give 
 an idea of the relative importance of sport in 
 those countries. 
 
 It is very different in England. The first 
 thing to attract my attention on this my latest 
 visit to England was the announcement on all 
 the newspaper bulletins: England's Big Task. 
 I happened to know that the Prime Minister was 
 seriously ill, that there was fierce debating in 
 the House of Commons upon the estimates for 
 the navy, and upon the new licensing bill just 
 brought in by Mr. Asquith, and that there was 
 fighting upon the frontier of India with a certain 
 
 230 
 
SPORT 231 
 
 tribe of natives. But England's big task had 
 nothing to do with these trivial matters. An 
 English cricket eleven was playing in Australia. 
 The Australian eleven in their second innings 
 had made an unexpectedly big score, and Eng- 
 land's big task was to beat that score ! 
 
 Though England may be fighting somewhere ' 
 in her vast dominions all the time, she is also 
 playing somewhere all the time. Unless the war 
 is a very important one, there is more interest 
 taken in the playing than in the fighting. They 
 are verily a nation of game-players and out-door 
 sportsmen. 
 
 If we could know just what circumstances, and 
 what environment our children would be born to, 
 and what tasks they would be set to do, we could 
 in time do as well with them as with horses and 
 dogs. The trouble lies not in heredity, but in 
 the haphazard of what awaits them. A horse is 
 bred to run, or to trot, or to draw heavy loads, and 
 we know exactly what we expect of him twenty 
 years before he is born. With ourselves it is 
 different. Few parents know what a son will be 
 called upon to face at the age of twenty-one. 
 Whether there will be a war and he must serve 
 his country in arms ; whether family fortunes will 
 be on the ebb and he must make money ; whether 
 a friend will offer him a start in anything, from 
 
232 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 a machine-shop to a newspaper office. It is 
 impossible even to train him for a pursuit, or 
 a profession, that is still in the hazy distance. 
 Civilization is the great disintegrator. As we 
 become rich we dissipate our energies, we think 
 of our dinners, our horses, our dogs, our friends, 
 our books, our clubs, our travelling. A little 
 strength and power goes to each. The peasant, 
 the poor man, must perforce direct all his powers 
 to one end, and often he becomes master there, 
 while the rich become weak and small in scattered 
 interests. So families cannot and do not keep 
 their places. The rough and poor and strong 
 come in and take them. Simplicity easily beats 
 out complexity and dissipation in a few genera- 
 tions. Hence the constant redistribution of 
 wealth and power. Until we can overcome this 
 ever-present obstacle to the successful breeding 
 of human beings, socialism, it would seem, is an 
 unnecessary philosophy. Nature beats socialism 
 hollow at her own game. 
 
 The English common-sense comes to the fore 
 again in an attempt to solve this problem. She 
 is old enough to know from experience that the 
 world is still ruled by men, and in all probability 
 will be for a long time to come. She breeds men 
 j therefore as strong and simple as she can. In 
 these islands sport is not a dissipation for idlers, 
 
SPORT 233 
 
 it is a philosophy of Hfe. They believe in it as a 
 bulwark against effeminacy and decay. 
 
 A Congregational minister makes a speech in 
 which he confesses to "a feeling of bitter humil- 
 iation" when he reads that the Prime Minister 
 is the owner of a Derby winner, and stands to 
 win or lose thousands of pounds on the race. 
 Lord Rosebery's attention having been called to 
 this speech by a political opponent, he replies as 
 follows: "Sir, I am desired by Lord Rosebery 
 to thank you for your letter and its enclosure. 
 He will offer no opinion on the latter, for these 
 matters should be dealt with according to the 
 good taste. Christian charity, and knowledge of 
 facts possessed by each person who touches on 
 them." The letter is signed by the Prime Min- 
 ister's secretary. Lord Rosebery is one of the 
 most accomplished Englishmen of the day. He 
 considers it lacking in Christian charity to abuse 
 him for owning and breeding a great race horse. 
 So do probably more than nine out of ten of 
 his countrymen. From top to bottom of English 
 society, from the Prime Minister to the Yorkshire 
 foot-baller, sport is almost as much a part of 
 national existence as eating and drinking. 
 
 Harvard University, not many years ago, con- 
 ferred the honorary degree of Master of Arts 
 upon a young Englishman, who devotes a good 
 
234 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 deal of his time to studying and furthering the 
 interest in wholesome sport. It was Mr. Leh- 
 man, a graduate of Cambridge University, Eng- 
 land, who received this distinguished mark of his 
 acceptability to the powers that be at Harvard, 
 and this in spite of the fact that the crews he 
 coached were wofuUy beaten by Yale. He was 
 recognized as typical of one very prominent 
 feature of British civilization. And so he was. 
 
 An accepted authority upon all matters of 
 sport in England has compiled some figures as 
 to the investments and expenditures upon sport, 
 by the forty odd millions of inhabitants of Great 
 Britain. His estimates, when they have been 
 criticised, have been criticised mainly because 
 they were too low. 
 
 His estimates are as follows: 
 
 SPENT 
 INVESTED ANNUALLY 
 
 Fox-hunting $78,035,000 $43,790,000 
 
 Shooting 20,335,000 40,640,000 
 
 Fishing 2,750,000 2,945,000 
 
 Racing 41,610,000 52,965,000 
 
 Yachting 28,000,000 15,160,000 
 
 But even these sums are not the whole of the 
 budget, for he adds : 
 
 SPENT 
 INVESTED ANNUALLY 
 
 Coursing $2,600,000 $1,587,000 
 
 Coaching . 1,451,250 1,188,975 
 
 Polo , 435,000 552,500 
 
SPORT 235 
 
 Golf, there are some seven hundred and fifty 
 golf links in Great Britain, counts for $2,625,000 
 invested in laying out of links, building club- 
 houses, purchase of clubs, bags, etc., etc., and 
 $3,627,750 annual expenditures for labor, up- 
 keep of club-houses, and for caddies, profes- 
 sionals, and other necessary expenses, including 
 travelling. 
 
 SPENT 
 INVESTED ANNUALLY 
 
 Rowing $1,420,000 $2,871,500 
 
 Foot-ball and Cricket .... 53,815,000 58,560,000 
 
 These figures have not been seriously ques- 
 tioned, except to add to their totals, so that we 
 may conclude that some $233,066,250 are in- 
 vested permanently, and $223,887,725 spent an- 
 nually for sport. There is, in short, an investment 
 in sport of some five dollars and twenty-five cents 
 for each man, woman, and child in the United 
 Kingdom, and a slightly smaller sum spent each 
 year for sport. When aggregate investments and 
 expenditures reach such figures as these, we may 
 be sure that the people who tax themselves thus 
 heavily have, or believe they have, satisfied them- 
 selves that there is a valuable equivalent of some 
 kind that justifies the expenditure. 
 
 The London County Council give in their 
 report an analysis of the athletic games played 
 
236 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 during the past twelvemonth in parks and open 
 spaces of London. The following table is of 
 interest : 
 
 PLACES GROUNDS GAMES 
 GAMES TO PLAT PROVIDED PLATED 
 
 Bowls 15 74 24,749 
 
 Cricket 35 452 28,904 
 
 Croquet 22 31 1,535 
 
 Foot-ball 35 231 16,228 
 
 Hockey 23 39 2,246 
 
 Lacrosse 5 7 120 
 
 Lawn Tennis 40 476 102,649 
 
 Quoits 20 36 2,063 
 
 Travel by train or motor anywhere in England 
 and you see games being played — particularly if 
 it be a Saturday — from one end of the country 
 to the other. The open spaces of England seem 
 to be given over to men and some women batting, 
 kicking, or hitting a ball. The attendance at 
 games on a Saturday is very large. Even in these 
 days of distress in the ship-building and cotton 
 industries, when the problem of the unemployed 
 is a serious one, there is no lack of sixpences and 
 shillings to gain entry to the foot-ball games. 
 Even at the beginning of the foot-ball season the 
 gate receipts show an attendance of more than 
 200,000 people. When the big and final games 
 take place, I have calculated that out of the male 
 adult population of England and Wales on a 
 great foot-ball Saturday one in every twenty- 
 
SPORT 237 
 
 seven is in attendance at a game of some sort, and 
 this leans to the error of being too few rather 
 than too many. 
 
 The domestic exports of the United Kingdom 
 in 1905 were slightly over thirty-eight dollars per 
 head, while the expenditure and investment for 
 sport are about ten dollars per head, or a little 
 more than one-fourth as much. Excluding 
 troops and expenditure on troops serving outside 
 the United Kingdom, England spent only the 
 paltry sum of $75,000,000 on her army in 1907, 
 and the cost of her naval armament in the same 
 year was only $167,500,000, both together con- 
 siderably less than was spent for sport. The 
 capital value of the sporting rents advertised by a 
 single firm of land agents one season not long 
 ago, reckoning the letting value at four per cent., 
 amounted to $43,750,000. The licenses to kill 
 game bring in a revenue to the State of something 
 over $925,000 per annum. 
 
 In a territory of some 19,000,000 acres in Scot- 
 land, 3,481,000 acres are preserved and devoted 
 to deer forests alone. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at then that England 
 has been described by one of her more irascible 
 sons, who was probably not interested in sport, 
 as: "The paradise of the rich, the purgatory of 
 the poor, and the hell of the wise." 
 
238 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 We are not convinced that the writer of this 
 description is right. The bookish man is prob- 
 ably disheartened by the size of the sport budget 
 of his country, and by the enormous amount of 
 time and energy thus expended. On the other 
 hand, when we examine the results, and gather 
 together the threads of what Englishmen have 
 accomplished all over the world, nobody but a 
 blind man can conceal from himself that certain 
 virile qualities of character have thus far in the 
 world's progress dominated the more intellectual 
 and philosophical traits. *" 
 
 Not only are muscles and sinews strengthened 
 and hardened, but the temper and the will are 
 trained as well. The man who learns to spar, for 
 example, not only schools his eye and his hands 
 and his feet to respond quickly when called upon, 
 but he learns also, and what is far more impor- 
 tant, to keep his temper under control, and to 
 take a pounding cheerfully; and if a man can 
 translate these lessons to serve in the larger 
 affairs of life, where temper is often tempted, and 
 where poundings are meted out to all of us with 
 even impartiality, he has learned a valuable 
 lesson. As Stevenson puts it: " Our business in 
 this world is not to succeed, but to continue to 
 fail in good spirits." 
 
 Every sport has the valuable effect of diverting 
 
SPORT 239 
 
 both mind and body. A sharp gallop, a round of 
 golf, a week's yachting, a day's shooting or fish- 
 ing, changes the current of one's thoughts, and 
 rests the mind as well as the body. All the bene- 
 fits to be had from sport group themselves under 
 these two heads, of training and diversion. The 
 lad at his rowing, liis foot-ball, his cricket, or his 
 tennis, needs the training more than the diver- 
 sion; while his father, riding, shooting, golfing, 
 or yachting, needs the diversion more than the 
 training. 
 
 The first settlers in America, indeed all the 
 inhabitants thereof, until very recently, needed 
 no sports for their training or their diversion. 
 Building roads, and bridges, and houses, and 
 railroads, and canals, and defending the same 
 from their savage neighbors, were enough. Civil- 
 ization in those rough years was hard training 
 enough, and every citizen was obliged to play 
 the game whether he liked it or not. But in- 
 creased prosperity, and, above all, steam and 
 electricity, not only in America but in Europe, 
 have done away with the necessity for constant 
 physical exercise, or for daily deeds of daring. 
 The best of mankind, however, know intuitively 
 that luxury is the most insidious of all foes. If 
 we are no longer obliged to ride, or to walk, in 
 order to see our friends or to attend to our busi- 
 
240 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ness, then we turn to and make a business of 
 riding, walking, shooting, fishing, climbing moun- 
 tains and hunting wild game, in order to keep 
 alive in us the hardier virtues, which, in the be- 
 ginning, made our forefathers capable of winning 
 a place for us in the world. As the necessity for 
 self-defence and great exertion to provide food 
 lessen, field sports become more popular. 
 
 It is often said as an objection to this argument 
 that a man can learn self-control and show high 
 courage just as well by doing his duty, whatever 
 and wherever it happens to be. It is not neces- 
 sary that we should have wars, or rough games, 
 like foot-ball or polo, to steady the nerves of men, 
 to give them courage, and to teach them to take 
 care of themselves. The controversies and temp- 
 tations and hard tasks of daily life are enough. 
 This is true in a way. Taking care of a peevish 
 child who is ill is a tremendous test of patience 
 and gentleness. Bearing the frowns of fortune 
 with cheerfulness and in silence shows courage. 
 Keeping oneself well in hand through the various 
 worries of daily life, in business, profession, or in 
 the home, is a constant schooling of the nerves. 
 Riding a horse over a five-barred gate, or across a 
 water-jump, is a test of horsemanship, but before 
 these can be successfully negotiated it is neces- 
 sary to have some training at simpler feats of 
 
SPORT 241 
 
 riding. It is the same with these other matters. 
 He who has learned self-control, fair play, and 
 good temper at his games, finds it easier to exer- 
 cise these same high qualities in the more compli- 
 cated emergencies of daily life. There is a Ger- 
 man proverb which runs : " When the devil cannot 
 go himself he sends an old woman." There is just 
 enough truth in the old woman argument against 
 rough games and sports to lead one to believe 
 that the devil sends it. The nation which pre- 
 sides over the destinies of one-fifth of the inhab- 
 itants of the globe spends over two hundred 
 millions annually for sport, and has invested 
 something more than that besides. 
 
 Perhaps there is no severer test of a man's all- 
 round abilities than his power to govern wisely; 
 at any rate the governing races of to-day are races 
 of sportsmen. The peoples who are inheriting 
 the earth to-day are the peoples who play games, 
 perhaps because their contests make them meek! 
 France, with her violent attempts in the last 
 hundred years to reduce all life to a philosophical 
 system, has a decreasing birth-rate, and has 
 become of second-rate importance as a world 
 power. In fact, every fresh compilation of 
 statistics helps to show that this declining birth- 
 rate is not a passing phase. The latest figures 
 available for Paris, those of 1907, show that an 
 
242 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 actual shrinkage of the population is a fact. In 
 spite of the fact that the marriage rate has been 
 on an ascending scale for the last twenty-five 
 years, and that the death-rate has had, on the 
 whole, a tendency to lower, the population does 
 not increase. Last year there were 50,811 births 
 against 50,499 deaths, a margin of only 312 to the 
 good. But even this is not accurate, since some 
 30 per cent, of babies born in Paris are sent away 
 to the country to be nursed. Their births appear 
 in the Paris registers, but if they die in infancy, 
 their deaths are recorded in the provincial com- 
 mune where the death takes place. Thus Paris 
 escapes having to record nearly one-third of the 
 infant mortality which might reasonably be ex- 
 pected in the city's death roll. Whether it be 
 the lack of the sporting instinct or not, there is 
 no gainsaying this proof of lack of breeding 
 power. And when it is added that only recently 
 France was obliged to dismiss her Secretary of 
 Foreign Affairs, at the demand of the German 
 Emperor, her situation as a world power becomes 
 pathetically inferior. 
 
 The traveller in Spain sees that the salient 
 characteristics of the race are overweening per- 
 sonal pride, untrustworthiness and cruelty. The 
 sordid stealing on all sides by Russians during 
 the war with Japan needs no repetition here. 
 
SPORT 243 
 
 The Chinese despise unnecessary physical exer- 
 cise, and can scarcely be driven to fight, and they 
 are no more capable of defending their country 
 than an enormous cheese to prevent itself being 
 eaten. On the other hand, Japan is a nation of 
 athletes whose prowess has only lately been dis- 
 covered, and they are the more dangerous ac- 
 cordingly. Indeed, it is an open question whether 
 England's hypocritical and short-sightedly selfish 
 alliance with these varnished savages has not 
 done more to menace Saxon civilization, both in 
 Europe and in America, than any diplomatic step 
 that has been taken for centuries. 
 
 We have seen something of the origins of the 
 English race in another chapter, and we have 
 seen, too, something of their almost universal 
 desire to be let alone, and to be governed only 
 up to that point where individual freedom is least 
 interfered with. Their love of the land, and 
 their out-door life, have prevailed through all the 
 centuries since they became possessed of what 
 is now Great Britain. 
 
 There is a rational philosophy back of this I 
 interest in sport. Only a race of strong men, " 
 fighting men, can keep themselves free from 
 enemies abroad and enemies at home, as they 
 have done, and conquer the world to boot. 
 Sport is merely artificial work, artificial adven- 
 
244 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 ture, artificial colonizing, artificial war. It is 
 shooting at a mark because there are no enemies 
 to shoot at; it is keeping the muscles hard and 
 the nerves steady, and the head, heart and body 
 under control, by a subterfuge, now that the real 
 necessity has passed. And though there are, 
 perhaps, higher and better tests of patience and 
 self-control and courage than are required at foot- 
 ball, hunting, or golf, there is certainly no better 
 preparation to bear those tests than the schooling 
 one gets by playing these games. 
 
 There is, of course, another side to this ques- 
 tion, that no one can afford to overlook. There 
 is a marked difference between a game played 
 for training or diversion and a game played as 
 a business and for a salary. That is no longer 
 sport but business, and there is nothing more 
 degrading than to give all one's time and energy 
 to the lighter, or to the physical, side of life. 
 That is not training or diversion, but merely a 
 debauchery of brutality. Society is good, sport 
 is good, novel reading is good as a diversion or a 
 rest from more serious matters, but any one of 
 them taken up as a business, as a vocation, makes 
 but a sad return to its devotee. Sport as a pro- 
 fession, I quite agree, breeds more bullies, boast- 
 ers and tricksters than anything else I can name. 
 
 Sport, too, even in the hands of amateurs, may 
 
SPORT 245 
 
 produce these same vulgar qualities. England 
 has suffered severely along these lines, because 
 here sport has so many more participants. The 
 gentleman sharpers, welshers, and blacklegs at 
 racing, pigeon shooting, and cards are too largely 
 recruited from the English. Only within the last 
 few years a turf scandal, involving two gentle- 
 men of high rank and another of no rank, either 
 socially or morally, disclosed a degree of infamous 
 chicanery unworthy of a Chinese gambling hell. 
 Race horses have been poisoned, pigeon shots 
 have sold themselves to the book-makers, and so 
 on. This indeed is the grave danger to sport 
 among a people whose tastes are predominantly 
 physical. An hundred years ago you might have 
 seen in a certain English village the village idiot 
 taken out on fair days, and chained to a stake on 
 the village green, that he might have an airing, 
 there, in all probability, to be teased by the local 
 loafers. A subscription for Tom Sayers, the 
 prize-fighter, was headed by Lord Palmerston, 
 and subscribed to by most of the members of the 
 House of Commons of the day. Prize-fighting 
 cock-fighting, bull-and-bear-baiting, rat-hunting, 
 dog-fighting, fights between men and dogs, and 
 the like, were favorite pastimes not only of the 
 masses, but also of the gentry, not an hundred 
 years ago. 
 
246 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The great Prime Minister of the early days of 
 Queen Victoria, Lord Melbourne, remarked that 
 he liked the Order of the Garter, because "there 
 is no damned merit connected with it!'* 
 
 There are people in the world who are of a 
 very coarse-grained moral fibre, of a very animal 
 make-up, people who do not realize that it was 
 not the absence of costume, but the presence of 
 innocence, which made the happiness of the 
 Garden of Eden. A disproportionate number of 
 these peope are inhabitants of the British Isles. 
 There are many fortunate results due to their 
 predominating animal characteristics, but there 
 are also disagreeable features of that same tem- 
 perament, that even the most friendly critic may 
 not overlook. The intense love of sport is 
 founded upon this virile temperament, which 
 must, of course, have its bad side. Fortunately 
 for them they have been the nation who have 
 undertaken, and, be it said, accomplished, some 
 of the greatest feats of conquering and governing 
 that the world has known. These adventures 
 over-seas, and their untiring devotion to sport at 
 home, have subdued and kept within bounds the 
 animal side of them, though it has and does still 
 crop out at times in evil practices. 
 
 A people of this type, somewhat indifferent to 
 intellectual interests of any kind, are almost 
 
SPORT 247 
 
 driven to exercise in some form, and their climate 
 is a still further incentive. 
 
 Possibly the greatest foe to an orderly and 
 useful life is monotony. The human mind and 
 the human body wear out easily if they are sub- 
 jected day in and day out to a steady repetition 
 of the same thing. The brain worker must 
 change from his mathematics to a novel, or from 
 history to the study of a new language, or he 
 finds his mind getting rusty. The man who goes 
 from house to ofiice and back again, seeing the 
 same faces, doing the same duties, conning over 
 the same figures; or the teacher going over and 
 over again the same tasks; or the judge hearing 
 every day the same round of quarrels, definitions 
 and criticisms, grow restless and tired. No one 
 of these may recognize that monotony is at the 
 bottom of his troubles, but the drip, drip, drip 
 wears the stone away. Drink, dissipation, wick- 
 edness of various kinds are put down to various 
 causes — to disappointment, to failure, to lack 
 of self-control — but in reality, back of all these 
 is monotony. These failures and shipwrecks 
 could not stand the deadly strain of such a life, 
 and did not realize that change was the medicine 
 they needed. For the great mass of men, to go 
 away, to travel, to change the whole environment 
 of life, is impossible. Just here is where sport 
 
248 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 comes in, in our artificial civilization, to help us 
 
 out. In Great Britain, for example, there are 
 
 some thirty thousand cricket and foot-ball clubs 
 
 alone, the members of which come from all classes 
 
 of society. Hands from the factories, clerks in 
 
 small shops, tradespeople, and the lesser profes- 
 
 \ sional men, all take a hand. All through the 
 
 I English provinces there are no distinctions of 
 
 1 class at their games. 
 
 t This rather heavy, muscular people keep their 
 health, and their heads, and their happiness, by 
 this almost universal participation in some form 
 of sport. It is their way of letting off steam, 
 I which every individual and every nation must 
 \ have for safety's sake, in some form or other. If 
 one computed the amount of wealth and territory 
 brought to acknowledge the British flag by 
 travellers, explorers, sportsmen, by adventurous 
 botanists, fishermen and the like, the two hundred 
 odd millions spent for sport annually would seem 
 a small sum indeed. 
 
 Newspapers of the most conservative bias 
 devote columns every morning to the doings of 
 the sportsmen. Cricket, foot-ball, racing, hunt- 
 ing, in all their details, are chronicled and dis- 
 cussed, and advertised, with the same serious- 
 ness as are speeches in Parliament, dispatches 
 from the seat of war, and international diplomatic 
 
SPORT 249 
 
 affairs. The classic races, such as the Derby, the 
 Oaks, the Grand National, are the theme of long 
 newspaper articles months and months before 
 they take place; and the betting odds against 
 this and that horse are published each morning 
 six months or more before he is to run, as regu- 
 larly as the stock-market quotations. 
 
 If the King's horse or the Prime Minister's horse 
 wins the Derby, or any one of the great classic 
 races, the owner, as he leads the horse back to 
 the paddock, is received with tumultuous cheer- 
 ing. This is true of any owner fortunate enough 
 to win such a race, but for the King, or a popular 
 statesman, the ovation is almost frenzied. There, 
 at any rate, the whole population is unanimous to 
 a man, a good sportsman is universally popular. 
 
 Prowess at any sport is counted upon as a tell- 
 ing factor in the availability of a candidate for 
 office. A candidate for Parliamentary honors 
 lets it be known as widely as possible that he is 
 an old "Blue" of either Oxford or Cambridge; 
 or that he has played for England at cricket or 
 foot-ball, or won honors in some one or other of 
 their many games, or been an adventurous 
 traveller, or a great hunter or fisherman. These 
 things help his candidacy, if not more, quite as 
 much, as any qualities of intellect, unless he be 
 a statesman who has already won his spurs. 
 
250 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The stranger, whether American or other for- 
 eigner, is at a loss to understand much of the 
 workings of the political and social life of Eng- 
 land until he has become thoroughly imbued with 
 the idea that sport is a much more serious and 
 much more widely distributed interest here than 
 anywhere else in the world. In England, some 
 form of sport is either the reminiscence or the 
 avocation of practically every man who has been, 
 or is physically capable of, playing a game, or 
 taking part in some form of field sports. 
 
 It is the only country in the world which sup- 
 ports not only a number of weekly and monthly 
 periodicals devoted to sport, but also two, if not 
 more, daily journals exclusively given over to the 
 chronicling of racing and game-playing. The 
 Sportsman is a recognized and well-edited daily 
 paper, to be found at every club and in many 
 houses. The betting odds, present and pro- 
 spective, the official starting prices, appear daily, 
 as well as columns of news dealing with the 
 exercise from day to day and the comparative 
 merits of all horses in training. 
 
 The King breeds and races horses, and is the 
 conspicuous and, be it said, a long way the most 
 popular, person present at all the great race 
 meetings. The Prince of Wales is one of the 
 half-dozen best shots in England, and I am not 
 
SPORT 251 
 
 far wrong in saying that his prowess as a shot 
 does more to endear him to Englishmen than any 
 other abiHty he may have. The Speaker of the 
 House of Commons fences, and shoots, and rides 
 to hounds. Lord Brassey is a yachtsman of 
 reputation, who has devoted himself to the ser- 
 vice of the navy as an editor, and has ruled a 
 distant colony with distinction. Lord Onslow is 
 an authority on harness horses, and a big-game 
 shooter of long experience, as well as a valuable 
 servant of the State; and so one might go on 
 with an interminable list of distinguished Eng- 
 lishmen who are as well known for their prowess 
 at some form of sport as for their ability, up- 
 rightness and self-sacrifice as political servants 
 of their country. 
 
 The very speech of the Englishman savors of 
 sport. *'He did it off his own bat." "He put 
 his money on the wrong horse." "This is a pain- 
 ful game." "Let us," or "we had better change 
 the bowling." "I don't think he can go the 
 distance." "It is an odds on chance," or about 
 anything the Englishman is apt to express his 
 feelings in the words of the bookmaker and say: 
 "Oh, I should call it a three to one," or "a five 
 to one," or "a six to four chance." "It isn't 
 cricket," or "it isn't playing the game" refers 
 to any underhand or not quite straight conduct. 
 
252 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 These and countless other expressions serve to 
 express distinctions and differences even of a 
 subtle kind. If you have hunted in Ireland for a 
 winter you come away convinced that most of 
 the stock phrases in conversation are invented 
 by the horses. The universal use of "fit" to 
 express one's condition, and of "feed" for eat, 
 are constant reminders of that habitation, dearest 
 of all to the hearts of so many Englishmen, the 
 stable. 
 
 I have never forgotten the slovenly grooms, the 
 staring coats of the horses, the bad smells, and 
 the generally unkempt appearance of the stables 
 of the King of Spain in Madrid. They spoil their 
 children in the Latin countries and neglect their 
 horses ; while in England the stables are in many 
 cases better and more comfortably furnished than 
 the nurseries. As a result, both the English 
 children and the English horses are superior! 
 There is a kindness which is cruel and a harsh- 
 ness which is kind. This nation of sportsmen 
 make this subtle distinction unerringly. Why ? 
 one asks. They are not philosophers. No. 
 They think little of the intricacies and niceties 
 of living, and discuss such matters even less. It 
 is God's air, and life on the land, and wholesome 
 bodies which guide them aright in such matters. 
 It is only of late, when the population is shifting 
 
SPORT 253 
 
 from the land to the towns, that they seem to be 
 losing the sterling qualities that are their heritage. 
 They are the last race of all to be fuddled and 
 disturbed by new religions, new theories of gov- 
 ernment, new solutions of the problem of exist- 
 ence; in short, that effervesence of semi-educa- 
 tion which is posing as the interpreter of God 
 and man all over the democratic world. We in 
 America are so much older, so much more weary 
 than they are, and it is with some regret that one 
 sees nowadays that England and the English are 
 not as boyish as they were. The greatest Eng- 
 lishman of letters now living, Rudyard Kipling, 
 writes of 
 
 "The flannelled fools at the wickets. 
 The muddied oafs at the goals." 
 
 He is much too sure an interpreter of all things 
 English to mean that quite as it stands. His 
 writing is the incarnation in words of ever youth- 
 ful England. Like other wise men, he is incensed 
 sometimes that his countrymen play so much. 
 If I were an Englishman I should pray God that 
 my countrymen might never play less so long as 
 they played the game. It is the men in the 
 closets, not the men in the fields and on the seas, 
 who breed sorrow, suspicion and envy; and the 
 Englishman is not so dull as it might appear 
 
254 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 when he pins his faith to the out-door man. He 
 is not far wrong in his belief that: Ceux qui 
 manquent de probite dans les plaisirs rien ont 
 qu'une feinte dans les affaires. 
 
 Enghshmen look upon sport as a part of 
 character, as well as a physical developing factor 
 in civilization; while the interest of the majority 
 of Americans is confined to the excitement ex- 
 pected from a contest. Many Americans look 
 upon the international yachting and other con- 
 tests almost as though they were serious battles, 
 and are elated or depressed accordingly; while 
 the English take these matters much more 
 calmly, and, while eager to win, welcome these 
 contests as being good for the sports and games 
 themselves, and bear always in mind that the 
 genuine sportsman: 
 
 " Sets his heart upon the goal. 
 Not upon the prize." 
 
 Let me put it even more clearly by saying that 
 the proportion of the spectators at Lord's on 
 the days of the university or public school cricket 
 matches, who have themselves played the game, 
 is very much larger than the proportion of spec- 
 tators present at a base-ball or foot-ball game 
 between Harvard and Yale. Or again, out of 
 the Eton and Harrow "elevens," the fathers of 
 
SPORT 255 
 
 twenty, and possibly the grandfathers of fifteen, 
 of the boy players, have themselves been crick- 
 eters — some of them even of suflScient prowess 
 to be on their school eleven. Of the last year's 
 Harvard and Yale base-ball and foot-ball teams 
 and 'varsity eights, not one of the players had a 
 father and grandfather who had both distin- 
 guished themselves along those lines, and there 
 were, with two noticeable exceptions that I recall, 
 almost none whose fathers, even, had been expert 
 at these games. 
 
 Though we Americans believe, or pretend to 
 believe, with Cicero, that every man begins his 
 own ancestry, one is forced to admit that a game 
 with a long ancestry of tradition will differ in all 
 probability from a game with little or none. It 
 must be admitted, too, that a boy whose father 
 and grandfather, whose uncles and brothers, all 
 play some game, or take an interest in some form 
 of sport, will grow up to look at the question very 
 differently from one whose relatives take little 
 or no serious interest in any game. Englishmen 
 practically never realize that sport lacks entirely 
 this atmosphere of almost sacred tradition in 
 America, while, on the other hand, few Americans 
 understand the very serious and unassailable 
 position of sport in England. 
 
 It is only two centuries and a half ago that the 
 
256 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 settlers of New England ran away from sport in 
 England, to found a commonwealth, where one 
 of the names for the devil was diversion, and 
 another amusement. It was said of these people, 
 the Puritans, that they believed hell to be a place 
 where every one must mind his own business. 
 At a time when English parsons and school- 
 masters were some of them playing cricket on 
 Sunday afternoons, and others of them hunting 
 two or three days a week in the season, their 
 representatives in America, who should have at- 
 tempted to imitate such enjoyments, would have 
 been ridden out of their parishes on rails, or con- 
 fined in a mad-house. In America to-day it 
 would be difficult to find a clergyman over sixty 
 years of age who had been a distinguished athlete 
 in his college days ; in England even the stranger 
 can count such by the score. 
 
 This ancestry of sport marks the difference in 
 the way we Americans look at sport, and it also 
 marks the very great difference in the auspices 
 under which we practise it. In America boys 
 play with boys almost exclusively ; even a profes- 
 sional coach for the crew, or the ball nine, is a 
 source of much discussion and dissension. Eng- 
 lish schools have not one, but several, profession- 
 als, and what is most important of all, English 
 boys play their games, a good part of the time at 
 
SPORT 257 
 
 least, with men. Old Carthusians, old Etonians, 
 old Wykehamists, go back to play their school 
 eleven, or their school foot-ball team; old uni- 
 versity men play the youngsters ; country gentle- 
 men have house parties of cricketers and polo 
 players; and the writer had the pleasure to play 
 against a team, at a certain country house, where 
 the host of fifty kept wicket, and captained an 
 eleven, no member of which was under thirty- 
 five; and it is with mingled feelings of pleasure 
 and pain that he recalls that they won. This 
 fact alone, of the participation of the adult and 
 middle-aged element so generally in English 
 sport, accounts for the wide difference in the way 
 in which sport is regarded and the way in which 
 games are played. Where boys and youths are 
 accustomed to play their games, cricket more par- 
 ticularly, with grown men, it introduces an ele- 
 ment of sobriety, courtesy and reticence in their 
 play and behavior, which are lacking to some 
 extent among boys and youths who play exclu- 
 sively among themselves. Games played in such 
 auspicious surroundings assume their relative 
 place and receive their proper value, for men do 
 not feel defeat so keenly, nor do they look upon 
 such victories as the greatest of all achievements. 
 Men play for the game's sake, while boys are apt 
 to play exclusively to win. In England games 
 
258 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and sports receive their status and character from 
 men; in America it is the boys who give our 
 games their status and character. 
 
 In England, as a result of this, there is a very 
 large and mature public, thoroughly conversant 
 with the rules, precedents, and traditions of their 
 games and sports ; and the English press follow- 
 ing this lead, differs from the American press 
 in its comments, criticisms, and descriptions in 
 much the same degree that the English players 
 differ from the American players ; that is, in their 
 sobriety, courtesy and reticence. 
 
 All good Americans were at one in condemning 
 the blatant and puerile excuses and accusations 
 of a portion — happily, a small and easily recog- 
 nized portion — of the American press, in regard 
 to the defeat of the Cornell crew at Henley a few 
 years ago. And when there were added to this 
 letters to the newspapers from trainer, and par- 
 ents, and the boys themselves, the condemnation 
 became disgust. Americans could not help feel- 
 ing, about these underbred and unsportsmanlike 
 people, as one would feel should his own son go 
 to visit at a friend's house, and behave like a 
 vicious stable-boy, and thus throw discredit upon 
 his home. Here was a most unhappy example 
 of the result of leaving the whole domain of sports 
 and pastimes quite too much in the hands of 
 
SPORT 259 
 
 professionals and undeveloped boys. On the 
 other hand, the visit of a Harvard crew to Eng- 
 land two years ago, to row against Cambridge, 
 made every American proud that he was so well 
 represented, and marked the great stride that the 
 genuine sportsmen has made in America. They 
 were good sportsmen, good fellows, and gentle- 
 men, and it was worth while to have them come 
 three thousand miles and suffer defeat, if only to 
 show the Britisher something first rate of our 
 own breeding. 
 
 It is true that, to some extent in these latter 
 days, the college contests and their arrangements 
 have had the great advantage of the superin- 
 tendence of an advisory board of college officials, 
 and college graduates, but even then one must 
 realize the difference between advice from the 
 outside, and the more forcible influence of exam- 
 ple by actual participation in the games them- 
 selves, by older men. It is just therein that the 
 English games and players have an advantage 
 over our own. The masters at the public schools 
 in England play with the boys every day ; during 
 their holidays, these same boys play with their 
 elder brothers, with their fathers and their 
 fathers' friends, and I recall one instance of a 
 grandfather who plays cricket with his sons and 
 grandsons, and no doubt there are many more. 
 
260 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Only the other day a certain family composed 
 of grandfather, father, sons, and one daughter, 
 challenged their local golf club to a match 
 of eight a side, and won. In America, with 
 the exception of a few of our boys' boarding- 
 schools, modelled somewhat upon the lines of 
 the English public schools, there is almost no 
 active participation in the boys' games by older 
 men. 
 
 The results of this difference between the Eng- 
 lish and American method are many and mani- 
 fold. Seldom a year passes with us but there is 
 friction, discussion, and even displays of puerile 
 bad temper about the arrangements for, and the 
 carrying out of, our intercollegiate games. Har- 
 vard will not play Yale at foot-ball ; or Princeton 
 declines to play Harvard at base-ball ; the smaller 
 colleges grumble at the arrangements made by the 
 larger colleges, and they quarrel among them- 
 selves to boot. What men can fairly represent 
 the college, and what men cannot; whether this 
 man or that has been bribed by having his 
 expenses paid at this or the other college merely 
 that he may be eligible to play on the base-ball 
 or foot-ball team or row on the crew ; which teams 
 shall play on a given date, when most gate-money 
 is expected; these and many other matters of a 
 most unsportsmanlike character come up for 
 
SPORT 261 
 
 acrimonious discussion, which ought not to arise 
 between gentlemen at all. 
 
 The games themselves are played during the 
 exciting and decisive moments, amid a yelling, 
 howling, and cheering, backed up by a brass 
 band, that would do credit to an Omaha dance 
 among Sioux Indians. Worst of all, this pande- 
 monium is methodically let loose under the direc- 
 tion of certain leaders, at a time when it is in- 
 tended that it shall seriously disconcert oppo- 
 nents. Decisions of the umpire, if they are in the 
 least doubtful, are received with jeers and howls, 
 and the players themselves express their dissat- 
 isfaction, by grimaces and gesticulation, which 
 would be unbecoming and punishable in infants 
 deprived of their toys. It is true that it was some 
 score of years ago, and possibly would not happen 
 now, but the writer playing foot-ball against one 
 of our prominent universities, on their own 
 ground, was with the rest of the team hooted at, 
 jeered, and almost interfered with during the 
 game by the members of the university whose 
 present supremacy at the game in question makes 
 such behavior unnecessary. 
 
 One may say that such behavior is never, cer- 
 tainly rarely, seen among amateurs in England. 
 Fathers would be ashamed of their sons ; schools 
 and universities would lose not only caste, but 
 
262 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 revenue and reputation, if such things happened, 
 and the head-masters and masters would root out 
 such evils at any cost. If the playing of games 
 resulted in this veritable delirium of excitement, 
 they would no more permit it than they would 
 countenance the taking of dangerous stimulants 
 by the boys. They would consider the two on 
 the same plane of harmfulness. 
 
 One must add, in this connection, that games as 
 played in America are not more difficult, nor are 
 the points to be decided nicer, than in English 
 games. An illustration of how we in America 
 try to obviate all possible causes for dispute is 
 found in the fact that the batter is not out now, 
 if he is caught off the bat by the catcher, at our 
 game of base-ball. It was difficult to decide 
 whether it was the snap of the catcher's gloves, 
 or some like-sounding noise, or the actual contact 
 of the swift ball and the bat; hence the change. 
 But at cricket there is even a more subtle point 
 still left to the judgment of the umpire. Indeed, 
 this latter is worthy of emphasis because it stands 
 quite alone, I believe, as being the only question, 
 not of fact but of hypothesis, left to the decision 
 of an umpire in any game now played. The point 
 in question is known to cricketers as "leg-be- 
 fore- wicket." Here the umpire is called upon to 
 decide whether a ball pitched at a certain spot 
 
SPORT 263 
 
 would have hit the wicket, if the batsman s leg 
 had not been in front of the wicket at the time. 
 It is a very nice question of eye and judgment at 
 the best of times. In scores of games of cricket, at 
 which the writer has been either spectator or 
 participant, he has seen many men given out 
 *' leg-before," men from all classes of society, 
 from the member of his university eleven down 
 to the butcher's boy on his village eleven; but 
 in no single case has he seen the player make a 
 gesture or open his lips to question the decision 
 of the umpire, or to make a comment. Granted 
 that one is even a prejudiced American, one may 
 well question whether so very delicate a decision 
 as this would pass unchallenged, by both players 
 and spectators, in a match between two American 
 colleges, upon which great hopes were placed — 
 and probably some dollars. 
 
 It is fair to say in this connection that our 
 spectators are largely at fault in this matter. 
 To the uninitiated the prime, not to say the sole, 
 interest of a game is, who wins. Our spectators 
 are despondent, or elated, according as their 
 favorites win or lose. All the accessories and 
 fine features of awell-contesed game are swamped 
 for the majority by this one all-embracing inter- 
 est. They appreciate little else, because they 
 understand little else, and they therefore put the 
 
264 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 emphasis much too strongly on the one feature 
 of winning. An English audience is not only 
 much less excitable, and much more experienced, 
 but a technically educated audience, and the 
 spectators get their enjoyment from a multitude 
 of nice details, and therefore do not have the same 
 baleful influence upon the players. 
 
 In this matter of the influence of the spectators 
 I must repeat, even at the risk of saying the same 
 thing over and over again in these pages, that 
 neither the English nor the Americans appreciate 
 how much more democratic in these matters, as 
 well as in many others, is England than America. 
 Englishmen who know America only at the long 
 range of theory cannot understand what seems 
 like a contradiction; and Americans, who are 
 mostly but birds of passage in England, do not 
 recognize the truth of it. There cannot be the 
 slightest doubt in the mind of the man who 
 knows both countries, and who has played the 
 games of both countries, that the Englishman is a 
 far more democratic sportsman than the Amer- 
 ican. I mean by that definitely that all classes 
 come far oftener in contact with one another, 
 especially in the provinces, than with us, and are 
 on more friendly and less awkward terms of 
 good fellowship. Trades-people, school-boys, the 
 squire, the parson and the noble play together. 
 
SPORT 265 
 
 interest themselves together, and get on together 
 in the most wholesome fellowship at cricket, 
 boating, hunting, and the like. Almost more than 
 anything else this has made England so homoge- 
 neous a nation. 
 
 This custom is an advantage in that thus a 
 very large number of both players and spectators, 
 of whatever class, have not only seen, but have 
 participated in, games, with players playing for 
 the love of the game, and with a respect for, and a 
 courteous obedience to, its best traditions. The 
 butcher and the ironmonger would be as quick to 
 see and reprehend such a trick, let us say, as 
 knocking a man's bails off when he accidentally 
 steps out of his ground, as the young gentleman 
 from Eton. The rule is that a man may be thus 
 put out for stepping out of his ground, but unless 
 he persists in stealing ground, there is a higher, 
 though unformulated, law, which says this ad- 
 vantage shall not be taken. In America, at base- 
 ball, on the contrary, the habit of running inside 
 of second and third base, thus shortening materi- 
 ally the ground covered by the runner, became 
 so frequent that now two umpires are employed, 
 when, if the players could be trusted, only one is 
 necessary. 
 
 The large proportion of the general public in 
 America who interest themselves in the playing 
 
266 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of games labor under the overwhelming disad- 
 vantage of seeing only our game of base-ball, and 
 that played by paid professionals who are man- 
 aged by stock companies, whose sole desire is to 
 make money out of an exhibition of ball-playing. 
 Nothing could be worse. These players are not, 
 as the stranger might gather from the names of 
 the clubs, as the Chicago, the New York, the 
 Boston, the Washington Club, men from those 
 particular cities. On the contrary, there is a 
 regular traffic in players by the managers of the 
 clubs, without the least attention to what part of 
 the country they hail from. They play purely 
 and simply for their salaries, with no more sec- 
 tional loyalty than a race horse which runs to-day 
 for one owner and to-morrow for another. As 
 their living depends upon their success at the 
 game, one can readily understand their attitude 
 toward the umpire, toward one another, and 
 toward the game. They care no more for the 
 best traditions of the game, or for a sportsman- 
 like attitude in their play, than a terrier hunting 
 rats. Nothing could be more debilitating to the 
 TYiorale of sport than the state of things as above 
 described. It is true that cricket in England 
 includes many professionals, but no county 
 eleven is without its contingent of gentlemen 
 players, one of whom is always the captain, and 
 
SPORT 267 
 
 the standard of behavior demanded of, and ac- 
 quiesced in by, both players and spectators, is 
 very high. A row on a base-ball field is not un- 
 common, and a graduated scale of fines, to be 
 inflicted upon players by the umpire, is a neces- 
 sary weapon of defence in his hands, against 
 insult and even assault; while a disturbance at a 
 cricket match is practically unheard of. Foot- 
 ball in England, played by professionals and 
 attended by vast crowds, suffers much as our 
 base-ball, and rows and assaults are not uncom- 
 mon. 
 
 I have gone at some length into this matter 
 because the American in the West, Southwest, 
 and South, indeed the American, generally, has 
 little interest in sport; and the influential por- 
 tions of these and practically all communities, 
 except in Massachusetts and the neighborhood 
 ot New York, where the college graduate is 
 beginning to make his influence felt, cannot from 
 any similar experience of their own, in the least 
 realize what a predominating factor sport is, 
 and has been, in this English civilization. The 
 Duke of Wellington's dictum about Eton's effect 
 upon Waterloo sounds in American ears like an 
 exaggerated flattery of sport. As a matter of 
 fact, it is a commonplace. There is not the 
 smallest doubt but that the education, moral and 
 
268 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 physical, of these Englishmen through sport, is 
 one of the most saliently distinct features of their 
 civilization. You can see it in their 'bus and cab- 
 drivers in the management of their horses, and 
 from thence all the way up to their management 
 of the large variety of races they control in their 
 colonies. What you see at Lord's you can see 
 in Egypt and in India. They play more than 
 they pray, and they spend more upon sport every 
 year than upon either education or religion. 
 There is no false shame about it. On the con- 
 trary, there is enthusiastic and unabashed interest 
 in all forms of sport, by practically the whole 
 population, from highest to lowest. It is looked 
 upon, in short, as part of the curriculum of edu- 
 cation. One might search a long time to find an 
 English cabinet, one or more of whose members 
 was not an authority at racing, or fishing, or 
 hunting, or cricket, or rowing, and the like. The 
 few who do not take an actual part, live sur- 
 rounded by, and steeped in, this atmosphere. 
 
 As we have seen, they are not by origin or by 
 temperament a pugnacious race. Their fighting 
 is done generally to preserve the peace, to keep 
 themselves and the land in quiet, however selfish 
 their aim may be. 
 
 It is a far cry, perhaps, from playing to paint- 
 ing, but I never stroll through an English art 
 
SPORT 269 
 
 gallery without noting the quiet, the homeliness, 
 the innocence of the scenes their native artists 
 choose for their studies. Fred. Walker, Dicksee, 
 J. C. Hook, Luke Flldes, Wyllie, Constable, 
 Poynter, Farquharson, Orchardson, Millais, HoU, 
 Frith, Watts, Linnell, and many others; go look 
 at their work, whether a landscape or a study of 
 a situation, like Flldes's pathetic painting *'The 
 Doctor," for example, and see how simple, how 
 quiet, how pathetic are the scenes that appeal to 
 them. It was to these people first that landscape 
 appealed. There is no enthusiasm for mere 
 land and sky, in Greek, or Roman, or Renascent 
 art. It was born here, that particular love of the 
 land, lifted into poetry and painting, through the 
 brush and pen of Englishmen. The animal 
 virility, which will out, and which finds its vent 
 elsewhere in political excitement, in pornographic 
 literature, and suggestive art; which unsteadies 
 and excites, and culminates here in Napoleon, 
 there in Zola ; or here In a revolution, and there in 
 a morbid philosophy ; seems to be dissipated and 
 calmed in this moist island, and to lose its fever- 
 ishness among these hard-playing islanders. 
 
 The bulk of their art leans to the mild type, as 
 does their literature, and their statesmanship. 
 The effervescent politician or demagogue, whose 
 denunciations are suspicions, whose promises are 
 
2Y0 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 dreams, and whose actual achievements are mere 
 rhetorical promises to pay, seldom makes much 
 headway here, and rarely lasts long. The turbu- 
 lent and spectacular journalism, common else- 
 where, pecks at the heart of public interest here 
 largely in vain. Men of whatever class cannot 
 be coached to believe that noise and fury, per- 
 sonal attacks and impudence, are to be trusted, 
 or that bombastic oratory means real business 
 and level-headed leadership. 
 
 The reader has quite mistaken the meaning of 
 this chapter, however, if on reading it, he con- 
 cludes that the writer intended a eulogy of sport 
 and game-playing, and in particular of English 
 sports and games, and nothing else. This is not 
 at all the object of the chapter. The intention is 
 to emphasize, strongly, the very large, one might 
 even say the disproportionately large, place they 
 occupy in English life, and to show also that what 
 good they do, and the comparatively little harm 
 they do, are due entirely to the fact that they give 
 in some sort a training for life, because, as a rule, 
 they are conducted on sounder lines of fair play, 
 sanity, and uprightness than anywhere else in the 
 world. 
 
 It is not the business of this chapter to discuss 
 the question as to whether a hard-drinking, hard- 
 riding, game-playing, out-door-loving people will 
 
SPORT 271 
 
 continue to hold their own against such rivals 
 as America, Germany, and Japan. Personally, 
 I believe we stand at the parting of the ways, and 
 that the student of England and the English is 
 looking on to-day at the first indications of the 
 decay of, in many respects, the greatest empire 
 the world has ever seen. The sun that never sets 
 is setting. Nothing but a tremendous, almost 
 miraculous, wrench can turn our stout, red- 
 cheeked, honest, sport-loving John Bull away 
 from his habits of centuries, to compete with his 
 virile body against the nervous intelligence of 
 a scientific age. His game of settlement on the 
 land, there to raise his crops, there to play, there 
 to live in peace, there to expand himself till he 
 occupies his present large proportion of it, he has 
 played to perfection. But the nations are play- 
 ing a new game now, and some of them seem to 
 play it more brilliantly, and more successfully, 
 than he does. Though one may praise, and 
 praise honestly, the game he has played, and the 
 manly way, upon the whole, he has played it, 
 this need not interfere in the least with the con- 
 viction that he is being caught up with — which 
 means, of course, ere long left behind — in the 
 far more scientific game that Germany, Japan, 
 and America are now playing. 
 
 That pleasant physical fatigue which lulls the 
 
272 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 nerves to sleep, and which is one of the most be- 
 neficent effects of physical exercise, may be at 
 work in this case, leaving Mr. Bull as confident 
 as ever, and pleasantly unconscious of his own 
 danger. That this worship of, and training of, the 
 body by playing games seriously and taking sport 
 seriously, has provided them with a calmness, 
 steadiness and fearlessness of character all their 
 own, no one can doubt. That these character- 
 istics have made them ideal governors of inferior 
 races, no one but perhaps a jealous German will 
 deny ; nor can it be denied, either, that it has kept 
 the peace at home, leaving them unharmed and 
 practically untouched by the class wars, and 
 modern political philosophies, which have caused 
 grave unrest among the masses of the people all 
 over the world. 
 
 England, at any rate, has kept in view the laud- 
 able ambition to bring up her rich with the hard- 
 ness and resourcefulness of the poor ; while we in 
 America have dropped into the vulgarity of 
 bringing up our poor to be rich. Not a few of 
 our social sorrows in America are being fostered 
 by a widely advertised, though fortunately small, 
 class, diligent in making themselves conspicu- 
 ous, who, having been recently poor, are trying 
 to appear anciently rich. At least there is no 
 such thinly veiled hypocrisy, no such self- 
 
SPORT ^73 
 
 conscious social awkwardness in England. That, 
 at any rate, is not their weakness. On the other 
 hand, the easy unconsciousness, born of great 
 physical vigor and great national success, is ap- 
 parently consoling them with a blind belief that 
 theirs is the only type of manhood, theirs the only 
 road to national health and prosperity. Alas, 
 there are many indications just now that, though 
 this is a brave and comfortable creed, it is not 
 comprehensive enough. 
 
VII 
 
 IRELAND 
 
 TO write of England and the English 
 without a chapter devoted to Ireland, 
 would be to omit a phase of English 
 social and political history which throws much 
 light upon the English character. There have 
 been many things said and written about Ireland, 
 sad, pathetic, insulting, vituperative, in praise 
 and in blame. Not being either English or 
 Irish, the present writer deals with the tangled 
 and perplexed subject, not from choice, but from 
 necessity. 
 
 The English-Irish divorce case has been in the 
 courts now for some seven hundred and fifty 
 years, and is apparently no nearer a settlement 
 to-day than at any date during those centuries. 
 A vivacious, emotional, law-ignoring Celtic lady 
 is united, not altogether of her own free will, to 
 a rather dull, self-centred, law-worshipping Sax- 
 on, and their domestic troubles have been unceas- 
 ing ever since. They have murdered their 
 children ; they have stolen one another's house- 
 hold effects; they have made love, and been 
 
 274 
 
IRELAND 275 
 
 made love to, by strangers ; they have committed 
 every offence known to the law; they have 
 patched up a temporary peace, only to fight the 
 more fiercely afterward; and they have called 
 one another every name in the vituperative dic- 
 tionary. It is the cause celebre in the annals 
 of the divorce court of the nations of the world. 
 The robbing, plundering, snubbing, bribing and 
 beating that have a part in their riotous and 
 unlovely domestic life make a story unique and 
 unparalleled in history. For seven hundred 
 years and more this has gone on with the result 
 that to-day, at the date of this writing, a promi- 
 nent English statesman says that the condition 
 of lawlessness in Ireland is "a scandal to civiliza- 
 tion." England sighs with pity at the lawless- 
 ness in other lands; she dispatches missionaries 
 over the world to bring the peace and charity of 
 Anglican Christianity, and she often follows 
 these with the sword, but her own spouse, Ire- 
 land, is as irreclaimable, as lawless, as vindictive, 
 as unloving as ever: 
 
 "Wid charmin' pisintry upon a fruitful sod 
 Fightin' like devils for conciliation, 
 An' hatin' each other for the love of God." 
 
 vThis island, with its 32,531 square miles, with 
 its present population of something over four 
 
£76 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 millions, separated from England by a narrow 
 strip of sea, I was given to Henry the Second of 
 England by 'Pope Hadrian the Fourth in 1155. 
 Nicholas Breakspeare was the only Englishman 
 who ever occupied the papal chair. To show 
 his affection for his native land, and perhaps 
 also to bring this island more immediately under 
 papal control, he presented it to Henry the Sec- 
 ond. If ever a nation was presented with 
 Pandora's box it was done then and there. 
 
 History in this case for seven hundred and 
 fifty years reads like romance, if not like rather 
 vulgar melodrama. An Irish King, the King of 
 Leinster, runs off with the wife of one of the 
 Irish chieftains, there follow war and riot, and 
 the King of Leinster, getting the worst of it, flees 
 to England and appeals to Henry the Second for 
 aid. Henry, seeing in this request an oppor- 
 tunity to take formal possession of the pope's 
 gift, sends some of his nobles over with an army, 
 and followed himself in 1171 with a still larger 
 army, and, after much resistance and bloodshed, 
 received the submission of most of the Irish 
 kings. Then having given away nearly the 
 whole of Ireland to his followers, he leaves a 
 chief governor behind him, and returns to Eng- 
 land. Then begins the long drama of opening, 
 shutting, slamming down the lid, and sitting on 
 
IRELAND 277 
 
 the lid, of this Pandora's box. Probably the 
 seeds of the land league, of boycotting, of cattle 
 driving, of obstruction in Parliament, were sown 
 at that time, and the crops have been continuous 
 and flourishing from then till this very day. 
 
 The authentic history of Ireland may be said 
 to begin when St. Patrick, taken as a slave from 
 Ireland to Scotland, and then returning to Ireland 
 after completing his studies as a priest, converts 
 Ireland to the Catholic faith early in the fifth 
 century. The Danes overran Ireland, as they 
 did England, in the eighth century, and the Irish 
 fought many bloody battles with them; but it is 
 not until Pope Hadrian the Fourth presents 
 Henry the Second with Ireland that Anglo-Irish 
 history begins, and that history is merely a series 
 of quarrels, disputes and wranglings, punctuated 
 with famine, plague and slaughter. 
 
 From this time on the Anglo-Norman barons 
 and their descendants fought among themselves 
 and fought the Irish. Through one reign after 
 another the affairs of Ireland went from bad 
 to worse. After the Wars of the Roses, when 
 Henry the Seventh came to the throne in England 
 in 1485, the English settlement in Ireland was 
 found to be very much reduced in power and 
 size. The first English settlers had married 
 Irish women and had become more Irish than 
 
278 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the Irish. Though this was forbidden and pun- 
 ished by the severest, and even the most brutal, 
 measures, it still went on. The Irish were not 
 considered to be even under the protection of 
 the English law. To kill an Irishman was like 
 killing a dog — none the less, while the English 
 had been occupied with wars in Scotland, France, 
 Wales and among themselves, the Irish had re- 
 covered something of their power. They went 
 so far as to receive, and to crown openly in 
 Dublin, one of the pretenders to the crown of 
 Henry the Seventh. Then was passed the fa- 
 mous, or infamous, Poynings's Act. Henry sent 
 as his representative to Ireland Sir Edward 
 Poynings, who summoned a parliament, and 
 passed the act which goes by his name to the 
 effect that: All English laws have force in Ire- 
 land, and the Irish Parliament must confine itself 
 to measures first approved of in England. The 
 English King and his council must be first in- 
 formed of all bills to be brought forward in the 
 Irish Parliament, and must give their consent. 
 
 It was four hundred years from the first in- 
 vasion of Ireland before Ireland was wholly 
 subdued. As late as the time of Henry the 
 Eighth, England only held possession of some of 
 the seaport towns of Ireland. King Henry the 
 Eighth in his day assumed the title of King of 
 
IRELAND 279 
 
 Ireland, for as much as any other reason that he 
 might not be supposed to have accepted or in- 
 herited Ireland from a pope. Henry confiscated 
 the church lands in Ireland, as he had done in 
 England, and began to bring to bear that pressure, 
 which has been insistent ever since, to make the 
 Irish give up the faith of St. Patrick for the novel 
 Protestantism which Henry the Eighth had 
 evolved from the necessities of his personal do- 
 mestic situation. Nearly all the chiefs in Ireland 
 were brought to acknowledge Henry as the head of 
 the church, but the people refused to do so then, 
 and have refused to do so ever since. We now 
 have clearly before us the two matters that under- 
 lie almost all subsequent troubles. Their land 
 had been taken from them, their religion was to be 
 taken from them. Edward followed Henry, and 
 was even more bitter in his Protestantism; then 
 came Mary and a return to the old faith; and 
 then Elizabeth, with years of religious and land 
 wars. There were few years of her reign without 
 war, bloodshed and rebellion in Ireland. If the 
 Irish could not be subdued and converted, there 
 followed the plan of establishing plantations of 
 English and Scotch in Ireland, who drove off the 
 Irish and settled in their place. During these 
 wars of the time of Elizabeth, crops, cattle and 
 houses were destroyed purposely to bring about 
 
280 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 famine and thus destroy and drive away the peo- 
 ple. Thousands of men, women and children 
 perished of starvation. People were jfined and 
 imprisoned for not attending Protestant worship, 
 and nearly a million acres of land in the counties 
 of Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh 
 and Cavan were turned over to settlers who 
 promised to be Protestants. Large numbers of 
 English and Scotch were thus settled by force, 
 fraud, or cunning on the most fertile Irish land. 
 In 1641 a general rising took place, known as the 
 rebellion of 1641, followed by atrocious cruelties, 
 murder, and misdeeds unmentionable. In 1642 
 a national convention was called at Kilkenny — 
 ominous name — to proclaim and establish the 
 independence of Ireland. This was aided in a 
 half-hearted way, it is supposed, by Charles the 
 First, then at loggerheads with his own Parlia- 
 ment at home. But a man of different stamp 
 from Charles then undertook the rule of Ireland, 
 and probably for the first time since England 
 came into possession of her Pandora's box the 
 lid was firmly closed and locked. From the re- 
 bellion of 1641, till the final stamping out of all 
 insurrection under Cromwell in 1652, out of a 
 population of 1,466,000, 616,000, or nearly half, 
 perished by sword or famine, and the land was 
 again turned over to Protestant settlers. 
 
IRELAND 281 
 
 Cromweirs solution of the problem was simply 
 wholesale murder, to be followed by plantations 
 of English and Scotch, who were to crowd out 
 the Irish. They were driven to emigrate, sold 
 as slaves or for worse purposes in the West 
 Indies, and those who would not, or could 
 not go, were segregated, and kept apart in 
 the county of Connaught, and treated as were 
 the Jews in Europe — driven like cattle into 
 their pens and marked off from the rest of 
 the population as though they were lepers. Of 
 the horrors of this period of Irish history it is 
 not easy to write without giving an effect of exag- 
 geration, and this is to be avoided at all hazards, 
 since these pages are written not to prejudice 
 any one, or to please any one, but merely as one of 
 the pigments necessary in painting our picture. 
 It is not Irish history but English history. 
 "Deeds of murder, rapine, plunder and devasta- 
 tion carried out so ruthlessly in Ireland, and 
 the expatriation of so many millions of the Irish 
 race, must recoil on England's head," writes 
 Corbet. "Such is the past of English govern- 
 ment of Ireland : a tissue of brutality and hypoc- 
 risy scarcely surpassed in history," writes Lecky. 
 "Such a combination of rapine, treachery and 
 violence as would have disgraced the name of 
 government in the most arbitrary country in the 
 
282 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 world," writes Benjamin Franklin. "The legis- 
 lative union between England and Ireland," 
 writes Gladstone, "was brought about by a com- 
 bination of violence, fraud, baseness, tyranny and 
 cruelty in a degree rarely if ever paralleled in 
 history." These are the comments of different 
 men, of different opinions, at different times, and 
 whatever may be the rights and wrongs of the 
 bickerings of to-day, these are fairly typical of 
 the estimate of practically all fair-minded men. 
 But the story is not told as yet. Cromwell's 
 iron heel marks indelibly the end of one period 
 and the beginning of another. The Restoration 
 brought little comfort to Ireland. Whether 
 Catholic or Protestant is in power seems to avail 
 the Irish nothing. Under William of Orange a 
 series of new penal laws were imposed upon 
 them, again with the intention of suppressing 
 Catholicism. It may be added here that the 
 natural hatred between the Anglo-Norman and 
 the Celtic portions of the population, between 
 1172 and 1540, only added to and made fiercer 
 the quarrel between them when Henry the 
 Eighth's religious reforms were made. The 
 English naturally followed the changes made in 
 England ; while the Irish held all the more tena- 
 ciously to papal supremacy, which, as a sequence, 
 became, and remains to-day, a synonym for 
 
IRELAND 283 
 
 hostility to England. Romanism and national- 
 ism became close allies in Ireland for a series of 
 reasons which even this short outline of Irish 
 history makes clear. The Irish Parliament was 
 barred to Catholics, as were the law and the 
 church, and practically all positions of trust and 
 emolument, while under Anne and George the 
 First, the rights of the Irish Parliament were 
 still further mutilated. 
 
 The Protestant Parliament of 1695-1709 
 passed a series of penal laws against Catholics 
 which for well-nigh two centuries kept the land 
 in a turmoil of suspicion, denunciation and syco- 
 phancy. *'The law does not suppose any such 
 person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic," 
 said a certain Lord Chancellor. An Irish Cath- 
 olic might not act as a teacher under pain of 
 banishment, and under pain of death if he re- 
 turned from banishment. Their children could 
 be educated only by Protestants. They could 
 not hold property in land or take land on lease 
 for a longer term than thirty years. They were 
 forbidden to carry arms. They could not act as 
 guardians of their own children, or marry a 
 Protestant wife, or inherit an estate from a 
 Protestant relative. The law of primogeniture 
 was abrogated in the case of a Catholic so that 
 his property might the more easily be distributed. 
 
284 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 These drastic measures against a religion served 
 also as an opportunity for the Protestant to pos- 
 sess himself of the land and wealth he coveted. 
 Here as ever, no doubt, the Englishman found 
 his duty trotting amiably and conveniently in 
 double harness with his selfish interests. 
 
 One notes these things not because they are 
 disagreeable, but because they throw light upon 
 both the English and the Irish character. The 
 imperturbable self-sufficiency of the English 
 probably interpreted these doings and this legis- 
 lation as a duty that they were called upon to 
 perform. Its effect upon the Irish was to make 
 them slaves with the vices of slaves. They grew 
 in jealousy, in malice, and in feline methods of 
 defence, of treachery and trickery. The Irish 
 contempt for law is an unfortunate heritage of the 
 many years when law was tyranny, and prejudice 
 against themselves was not only looked upon as a 
 virtue, but paid for by the ecclesiastical and gov- 
 erning authorities as a professional service. The 
 informer was regularly paid. He received twenty 
 pounds for an unregistered priest, and fifty 
 pounds for a bishop. >^ Even as late as our own 
 day one hears of a Lord Plunket who evicts his 
 Catholic tenants because they refuse to educate 
 their children in Protestant schools; a Lord 
 Leitrim who violates the daughters of his tenants ; 
 
IRELAND 285 
 
 a Lord Clanricarde whose treatment of his 
 tenants is such that his own counsellor at law 
 describes it as "devil's work." 
 
 As far back as 1665 and 1680 laws were enacted 
 in the English Parliament absolutely forbidding 
 the importation into England of all cattle, sheep 
 and swine, of beef, pork, bacon, mutton, and 
 even butter and cheese. In 1699 the Irish were 
 forbidden the exportation of manufactured wool, 
 lest any or all of these, the natural products of a 
 rich grazing country, should interfere with the 
 profits and prosperity of English merchants. 
 
 One may go far afield to find a more typical 
 example of that characteristic of the English of 
 bovinely seeing duty where their interests call 
 them. "'Toward the end of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury," says Froude, *'the mere rumor of a rise of 
 industry in Ireland created a panic in the com- 
 mercial circles in England. The commercial 
 leaders were possessed of a terror of Irish rivalry 
 which could not be exorcised." As a result of 
 this stupid commercial fear, England set out to 
 paralyze and to destroy the industries and the 
 commerce of Ireland by prohibitory measures. 
 William the Third, shortly after his coronation, 
 said that, for his part, he would do all that he could 
 to discourage the woollen manufacture in Ireland. 
 A Navigation Act of 1663, confirmed in 1670 and 
 
286 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 completed in 1696, excluded Ireland from colo- 
 nial commerce. In 1663 and 1669 the English 
 market was closed to Irish cattle which were de- 
 clared "a public and common nuisance," as also 
 to Irish meat, butter, and like products. In 1699 
 the Irish were forbidden to export woollen goods, 
 and under William the Third and Anne the cot- 
 ton industry was ruined by an English import 
 duty of 25 per cent. "One by one," writes Lord 
 Dufferin, "each of our nascent industries was 
 either strangled in its birth, or handed over 
 gagged and bound to the jealous custody of rival 
 interests in England, until at last every fountain 
 of wealth was hermetically sealed." It seems to 
 have been the policy of England to starve Ireland 
 into subjection, industrially and commercially, as 
 the easiest method of keeping her harmless to 
 themselves. 
 
 The coming of free trade to powerful England 
 was one thing, to emaciated Ireland it meant 
 merely another blow, another foe, another fail- 
 ure. Ireland was no more fit to compete than 
 a starveling to enter the prize-ring. And a 
 starveling she is still to-day. The death rate in 
 Dublin is 25 per 1,000, the highest of any town in 
 Europe. How deplorable this is may be judged 
 from the comparison with London, 17 per 1,000; 
 Paris 16.1 per 1,000, and approximately the same 
 
IRELAND 287 
 
 for New York. In Dublin, out of 59,263 fami- 
 lies, 36 per cent, live in one-room tenements. In 
 London the proportion is 14.6 per cent., in Edin- 
 burgh 16.9 per cent. It has been said that there 
 are as many as 1,500 houses in Dublin in such 
 insanitary condition that they ought to be de- 
 molished. These same houses include 5,383 
 rooms in which are living 12,926 persons. 
 
 During a winter spent in Ireland I often asked 
 myself and others why this beautiful grazing 
 country, with the huge market of London at its 
 very doors, was not made rich by this very 
 opportunity. The answer it appears is a simple 
 one. Eggs from Normandy pay in carriage to 
 London 16s. 8d. per ton; eggs from Denmark, 
 24s.; and eggs from Galway in Ireland, 94s. per 
 ton. Butter from St. Malo or Cherbourg pays 
 20s. per ton to London; butter from Antwerp 
 pays 22s.; but butter from Tipperary, where I 
 was living, pays 35s. per ton. No wonder the 
 Irishman replied to an Englishman who asked 
 him why they did not sell their fowl in London : 
 "Do you see that piece of water ? If I could sell 
 that water in hell, I could get any money I 
 wanted for it, but the job is to get it there." 
 The chief exports from Russia to the United 
 Kingdom next to corn and wheat are butter and 
 eggs, oats and barley! The chief export from 
 
288 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Germany to the United Kingdom is sugar, refined 
 and unrefined! These, with thousands of fertile 
 acres unused or used for grazing in both Ireland 
 and England. The chief export from France to 
 the United Kingdom next to silk tissues is mil- 
 linery, so the statistics say, but there is no other 
 proof of the fact! Even were the average Irish- 
 man not the shiftless being that he is, it would not 
 be surprising that one Irishman out of every 
 eleven lives on the rates, as is the case. Accord- 
 ing to the figures of the last ** Statistical Abstract 
 of the United Kingdom," the population of 
 Ireland (1908) was 4,363,351, and the number of 
 paupers in receipt of relief in unions was 103,429. 
 The population of Ireland in 1846, or roughly 
 half a century ago, was 8,500,000, and has there- 
 fore decreased just one-half in that time. One 
 need read but a few pages of Irish history to dis- 
 cover therein the ancestry of many of the Irish- 
 man's faults, weaknesses and vices. We are not 
 blaming, or excusing, but merely analyzing the 
 characteristics of this people who alone in the 
 world have hurled the word Failure at the Eng- 
 lish race we are dealing with. 
 
 While the population of Ireland in 1841 was 
 over 8,000,000, and was in 1901, 4,458,775; the 
 population of Scotland in 1841 was 2,620,184, 
 and in 1901 was 4,472,103. The number of per- 
 
IRELAND 289 
 
 sons receiving poor relief goes on steadily in- 
 creasing. In 1903 the number was 452,241; in 
 1904, 488,654; in 1905, 558,814; and in 1906, 
 562,269. 
 
 While 51,462 police suffice to keep the 39,273,- 
 086 population of Great Britain in order, the 
 4,386,035 population of Ireland requires the 
 enormously disproportionate number of 11,144 
 police for that purpose. Ireland has one con- 
 stable for every 362 inhabitants; England one 
 for every 541; Scotland one for every 885. 
 Leaving out of count the two capitals, London 
 and Dublin, the cost of the English police is 
 2s. 3d. per head of the population, while the cost 
 for Ireland is 6s. 7d. While the police in Scotland 
 cost £400,000, in Ireland they cost .£1,300,000. 
 They seem to possess an invulnerable elasticity 
 of irritability, at least against England, which, de- 
 spite poverty, emigration, police supervision, and 
 centuries of severe maulings, crops out again at 
 every available opportunity. During the Boer 
 war they cheered the Dutch victories in the 
 streets and read and re-read with genuine pleas- 
 ure accounts of defeats of British troops. 
 
 Finally, in 1782, when England was busy in 
 another direction in an attempt to tax without 
 representation, and to control and curtail the 
 commercial energies of her colony in America, 
 
290 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the Irish Parliament was declared to be an inde- 
 pendent legislature. This was forced upon 
 England after years of an agitation led by 
 Grattan and Flood, and at a time when Ireland 
 had a large armed force raised as a defence 
 against England's then numerous foes. The 
 Irish Parliament became : The King, Lords and 
 Commons of Ireland to make laws for the people 
 of Ireland. Following this came the struggle 
 for Catholic emancipation, but at this demand 
 George the Third, who thought, as did many 
 other Englishmen, that too much had been 
 granted already, took fright, became obstinate, 
 and would grant no further privileges. The 
 united Irishmen soon grew into a rebellious or- 
 ganization. The French were inclined to aid 
 them, and a small French force did land in 
 Ireland, but both they and their Irish allies were 
 swept to destruction, and again cruelty and 
 slaughter on both sides, followed by famine, were 
 a repetition of the centuries' old story. This 
 Irish Parliament of three hundred members con- 
 tained no Catholics, and Ireland was nine-tenths 
 Catholic, and all but some eighty seats were in 
 the hands of a few lords and landowners who 
 returned whom they pleased. The government 
 still controlled, though the Parliament was nom- 
 inally independent. 
 
IRELAND 291 
 
 It was Pitt who, while Prime Minister, became 
 convinced that, to have peace and quiet in Ireland, 
 Ireland should be united to England as Scotland 
 had been in 1603. To get the Irish Parliament 
 to pass an act of union was very different from 
 merely controlling a government majority, and 
 then, under Cornwallis and Castlereagh as repre- 
 sentatives in Ireland of Pitt and the English 
 Government, began a campaign of shameless 
 and open bribery, which was all the worse be- 
 cause acknowledged and condoned It must be 
 remembered in this connection that we are read- 
 ing of a time when such methods were by no 
 means uncommon in England itself, where 
 "every man," it had been said by a notable 
 statesman, "had his price ! " Though the bribers 
 were blameworthy, some one must make them 
 so by taking the bribe, and one must leave it to 
 the Irish to characterize those who took titles and 
 money to betray their countrymen. 
 
 " StiU as of old 
 
 Man by himself is priced. 
 For thirty pieces Judas sold 
 Himself, not Christ." 
 
 Owners of boroughs were paid as much as 
 .£15,000 a seat, and peerages and patronage were 
 lavishly given for support. These seats in the 
 
292 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Irish Parliament were looked upon as so much 
 property bringing in a large income to their 
 owners, and since the abolition of the Irish Par- 
 liament meant the cutting down of the number 
 of members from say three hundred to one 
 hundred, the owners of these seats were paid, 
 bribed or promoted as a compensation. 
 
 "The majority of Irish titles," writes Mr. 
 Lecky, "are historically connected with memo- 
 ries not of honor but of shame." 
 
 Mr. Frederick Trench became the first Lord 
 Ashtown; Mr. Will Handcock became the first 
 Lord Castlemaine; General Henniker became 
 the first Lord Henniker; Sir Richard Quinn be- 
 came the first Earl of Dunraven; the first bar- 
 oness Dufferin was so created at the request of 
 her son. Sir James Blackwood, with remainder 
 to himself and his heirs; Mr. Robert Lawless 
 became the first Lord Cloncurry; Mr. Seeton 
 Pery was himself made Viscount Pery, and 
 manoeuvred his younger brother into the earldom 
 of Limerick; Mr. Cole became Earl of Ennis- 
 killen; John Scott, of very humble origin, be- 
 came Earl of Clonmel; James Alexander, a rich 
 parvenu from India, buys a seat and becomes 
 Earl of Caledon; John Hely, afterward John 
 Hely-Hutchinson on his marriage to an heiress of 
 that name, afterward Provost of Trinity College of 
 
IRELAND 293 
 
 most unpleasant memory, received for his wife the 
 title of Baroness Donoughmore, with remainder 
 to the male heir; James Cuffe became the first 
 Lord Tyrawley, and carried the impertinent de- 
 mands, then the fashion, to the pitch of asking a 
 peerage for his illegitimate son ; William Tonson 
 became first Lord Riversdale; John Bourke is 
 first Lord Naes, then Earl of Mayo; Mr. Corry 
 became first Baron Belmore, then Earl of Belmore; 
 Abraham Creighton became first Baron Erne, and 
 later a descendant became Baron Fermaugh 
 of the United Kingdom; James Agar became 
 first Lord Clif den ; all these and more date their 
 elevation to the peerage from the time at the be- 
 ginning of the century when England, by open 
 and scandalous corruption and bribery, was buy- 
 ing up the Irish Parliament. In one day eigh- 
 teen Irish peers were created, and seven barons 
 and five viscounts raised a step in the peerage. 
 
 Even the London Times in 1860 characterized 
 the history of the relations between England and 
 Ireland with prophetic despair: "Ireland will 
 become altogether English and the United States 
 republic altogether Irish. Yes, there will be 
 again an Ireland, but a colossal Ireland placed 
 in the new world. We must gird our loins to 
 encounter the nemesis of seven centuries of 
 misgovernment. " 
 
294 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 In our own day the Irishman in America does 
 what he can to fulfil this prophecy of the Times. 
 Here is a portion of a speech made shortly before 
 the celebration of St. Patrick's Day in California^ 
 The speech was received with a tumult of ap- 
 plause. *'I am glad to see the Irish people 
 arming and practising the use of rifles and instru- 
 ments of war. For centuries they have been borne 
 down under the tyrannic weight of English rule. 
 In every city of the world where a patriotic 
 Irishman lives on Tuesday the green flag of Ire- 
 land will be waved. We must make a success 
 of our celebration, for great things depend upon 
 it. It will reflect the spirit of Ireland throughout 
 the world, and some day it will bring about the 
 raising of the green flag where it belongs. The 
 Union Jack of England will be hauled down and 
 torn in pieces, and two hundred thousand armed 
 men will march into the county of Cork and drive 
 the English into the sea." 
 
 In July, 1863, during our war between North 
 and South, the Irishmen of New York became 
 enraged at the fearless editorials of the then 
 editor of the Tribune, Horace Greeley. They 
 mobbed the office of the Tribune shouting: 
 "Down with the old white coat what counts a 
 naygur as good as an Irishman!" 
 
 They mobbed and burned to the ground a 
 
IRELAND 295 
 
 negro orphan asylum, but were finally thrashed 
 and brought to terms by local troops. A fearless 
 and patriotic mayor of New York was roundly 
 denounced because he would not permit the 
 hoisting of the Irish flag over the City Hall of 
 New York. If Mayor Hewitt had never done 
 anything else, he deserves a monument for that. 
 I like Irishmen, we all, I think, like them in 
 America, but America is not Ireland, and Amer- 
 icans are not Irish. We fought our fight with 
 England, and Ireland must fight hers, and long 
 suffering as is the busy, good-natured American, 
 the world may depend upon it that he will never 
 be bullied by Irishmen, or any other foreign 
 people, into pulling their chestnuts out of the 
 fire, or listen to the dictates of any knot of mal- 
 contents to whom he has given the freedom they 
 could not win for themselves. 
 
 The Irish have enough of the English temper 
 in them to bully and to grab, but the thrashings 
 they have received from the Lion would be as 
 spankings to flogging at a cart's tail compared to 
 what they would prepare for themselves did they 
 once attempt to harness the Eagle in the shafts 
 of their political jaunting-car. The Irishman has 
 become far too much imbued with the notion 
 that his business is agitation rather than exertion. 
 The American people have little sympathy at 
 
296 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 bottom with this rather effeminate view of achiev- 
 ing poHtical, or commercial, supremacy. 
 
 America in these days has her own gigantic 
 problems, both at home and abroad, to solve, 
 and she needs all her citizens to bear arms and 
 burdens in the service of America first, last and 
 all the time. The Irish, the Germans, the Eng- 
 lish, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Italians, are 
 not in America to exploit America for their own 
 purposes, but to make and keep America for free 
 Americans, and no one who knows the country 
 has the shadow of a doubt but that she can and 
 will keep them within these bounds. Politicians 
 from time to time pander to the Irish, or the 
 German voters, but should these people demand 
 for themselves what is intended for all of us, 
 there would be a veritable earthquake of wrath 
 throughout the country. It is one thing for an 
 O'Connell or an Emmet to lead an insurrection 
 in Ireland, it is quite another for any Irishman to 
 attempt to lead an insurrection for or against 
 anybody in America. 
 
 The Act of Union in 1801 was followed by a 
 short-lived rebellion under Emmet. Wellington 
 finally persuaded George the Fourth to grant 
 emancipation, and Catholics were finally ad- 
 mitted to Parliament after a struggle lasting some 
 three hundred years. In 1842 O'Connell started 
 
IRELAND 297 
 
 a great agitation to repeal the Union. He coun- 
 selled no violence, but his fiery followers broke 
 away from his moderate methods and drifted into 
 active rebellion. This rebellion was put down, 
 the ringleaders escaped or were hanged, but the 
 people were again aroused, and national feeling 
 revived, to be followed by the Phoenix conspiracy 
 in 1858, and the Fenian movement in 1867. By 
 1847 the population of Ireland, through starvation 
 and emigration, had fallen from eight millions to 
 less than five millions. 
 
 Gladstone and Bright endeavored to bring 
 about many much-needed reforms in the admin- 
 istration of Ireland. Gladstone carried through 
 his bill to disestablish and disendow the Irish 
 church, and passed a series of measures tending 
 toward a better distribution of the land. Later 
 a Land Purchase Commission was created to 
 assist tenants in buying their farms from the 
 landlords. Meanwhile the struggle, punctuated 
 as usual by battle, murder, sudden death and 
 other horrors, between the peasantry and the 
 landlords, continued. Parnell and the Home 
 Rule Party are familiar history to this generation, 
 and the story of how they forced the claims of 
 Ireland upon the attention of England by a 
 system of persistent obstruction of all business in 
 the House of Commons needs no repetition here. 
 
298 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 On the surface it looks as though all the great 
 struggles in Ireland had arisen from the attempt 
 to impose a system of land tenure by foreigners, 
 and the confiscation and reconfiscation, under 
 the Normans, James the First, Cromwell and 
 William of Orange, of the land for seven hundred 
 and fifty years ; and the imposition of a religious 
 faith abhorrent to a majority of the inhabitants, 
 aggravated by laws passed to crush out Irish 
 rivalry in various branches of trade and manu- 
 facture. But this is a superficial reading of the 
 facts of the situation. 
 
 England has made herself the greatest empire 
 the world has ever known by defects and qualities 
 of which something will be said in these pages, 
 but wherever she has colonized she has dealt with 
 an inferior people, or with those of her own race 
 for whom she has a respect that mitigates the 
 bullying temperament, or, where she has persisted 
 and bullied her own children, she has found them 
 too much for her. Ireland, after one immigration 
 piled on another of English, is largely English to- 
 day, and England is mistakenly attempting to 
 curb in Ireland that vigorous insistence upon 
 personal freedom which is the all outweighing 
 quality of these Saxons, whose Alfred, whose 
 Magna Charta, whose beheading of Charles the 
 First, should have taught by now that, when this 
 
IRELAND 299 
 
 is eaten out of their blood, there will be little of 
 iron left in it. There is no more peaceable 1 
 gentleman in the world, when he is allowed to ) 
 mind his own business, than an Englishman ; i 
 but whether socially in his club, or domestically/ 
 in his house, or commercially in his affairs, when 
 he is meddled with, his rudeness, his harshness, \ 
 his pugnacity and selfishness are open and in- 
 comparable. 
 
 I have taken some pains to dig out and to make 
 clear this short outline of Irish history, because 
 the relations of these two throughout all these 
 years is a suggestive commentary upon the Eng- 
 lishman and his ways. He thinks that his stead- 
 ily progressing bulk must push any and every 
 thing out of his way ; he thinks his courage will . 
 cleave a path; he thinks his honesty will inspire 
 respect, and his sense of fair play, confidence. 
 So they do in India, so they do after a few spank- 
 ings of the natives, in Africa, so they do through- 
 out his many settlements all over the East; but, 
 among those of his own blood, these matters 
 are taken for granted, and not looked upon as 
 god-given virtues of a people, whose patronage 
 and whose rule should be accepted as a blessing. 
 Nevertheless the Englishman goes on just the 
 same, loses his colonies or lets them alone, but 
 still poses his great bulk at Ireland, one century 
 
300 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 after another, with calm disregard of the fact 
 that these Celtic Englishmen are no more im- 
 pressed, no more afraid of him, than is the 
 American. The Irishman is enraged, the Amer- 
 ican is amused. Apparently he knows no other 
 way. The Englishman was permitted until quite 
 recently to beat his wife, or to lock her up. If 
 she is not impressed by the good qualities he has, 
 and be it said he has good qualities, then he is at 
 his wits' end, and has recourse to a stick. He 
 knows no better now. 
 
 One grows to feel that Ireland is not an island 
 of England, but a characteristic of England. All 
 the obtuseness, all the blindness to other qualities 
 than his own; all the cold stubbornness, all the 
 inability to change his ways, or to adapt himself 
 to another temperament; all his complete help- 
 lessness when he is not respected and obeyed 
 from the start; all his awkwardness when he 
 attempts kindly compromise or cajolery, become 
 exaggeratedly patent in his national failure to 
 live at peace with Ireland. 
 
 Though this condition of affairs is most notice- 
 able in the case of Ireland, the same social 
 awkwardness exists elsewhere. Ireland is audi- 
 ble and voluble, and the world has not been left 
 in ignorance of her grievances; but one now 
 begins to hear a faint rumbling from that hitherto 
 
IRELAND 301 
 
 dumb, dark race in India. The complaint is 
 along exactly the same lines, what one hears of it. 
 The Englishman must govern, must govern alone, 
 must be supreme, must not be meddled with by 
 an inferior race, and, mark you, all other races 
 are assumed to be inferior. A distinguished 
 French publicist and traveller, just returned from 
 India, and writing as distinctly a friend to 
 England, has this to say: 
 
 "En somme, ce qui manque le plus a I'admin- 
 istration anglaise aux Indes, c'est la souplesse: 
 tons ses agents sont de parfaits gentlemen, hon- 
 netes et justes, d'une forte trempe, plus que 
 personne capables de resister a ce climat amoUis- 
 sant, possedant au plus haut degre le self-control, 
 la f aculte de se dominer. Mais ils croiraient faire 
 preuve de faiblesse s'ils ajoutaient a tout cela 
 quelques grains d'amabilite. Ce ne serait pour- 
 tant pas un crime de condescendre a gagner les 
 sympathies des indigenes, de I'elite tout au 
 moins. ..." 
 
 It is plain that other observers, friendly though 
 they be, cannot escape the impression that we 
 have emphasized in the foregoing pages. It is 
 fair enough, then, to write that nothing is more 
 characteristic of England than her seven hundred 
 and fifty years of failure to get on with Ireland. 
 Her strength and her weakness are admirably 
 
302 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and plainly held up to view for him, even who 
 gallops, to see and to understand. England 
 simply cannot get on with those who do not trust 
 her, and obey her, except by drubbing them into 
 submission, hoping meanwhile that they will 
 grow to appreciate her. The individual English- 
 man is not unlike this. He can turn away from 
 you, ignore you, go and live by himself without 
 you, or if it is worth while, he can try thrashing 
 you, but as to winning your regard through any 
 except his negative virtues, he is as helpless as a 
 sullen child. What then do you expect a man 
 like that to do with a wife like Ireland ? These 
 Saxons 
 
 "Who live by rule. 
 Grave, tideless blooded, calm and cool." 
 
 I am of the old-fashioned opinion that the best 
 men ought to rule, and that when necessary to 
 bring this about an appeal to force is justifiable. 
 This has been also the pith of England's philos- 
 ophy on the subject. It applies well enough 
 where there is no question of the superiority 
 of the Englishman, but it fails lamentably where 
 his superiority is open to question. Since 1776 
 the Englishman has learned that certain colonies 
 populated by his own breed will be self-governing, 
 whether he likes it or not, and by a certain auto- 
 
IRELAND 303 
 
 matic compromise they are little meddled with. 
 But this has not been brought about by any log- 
 ical sequence of ideas. If logic were a man and 
 lived in England, he would be the loneliest person 
 in the three kingdoms. No theory is ever in- 
 tended to be carried to a conclusion here, but 
 only to a comfortable working point. The Irish 
 have enough of the Celt left in them to be irri- 
 tated by this lack of sequence, lack of logic, in 
 their neighbors. They cannot be made to under- 
 stand why they are still governed much as though 
 they were Zulus. They cannot understand why 
 they are the only parcel of their breed left in the 
 world who cannot govern themselves, and they 
 will not accept the situation on the ipse dixit of 
 their brethren across the St. George's Channel. 
 With the rights and wrongs of this question we 
 have nothing to do. It is of interest to us only 
 that, in analyzing the situation, we find a complete 
 breakdown of the Englishman's ability to govern, 
 and to live at peace, with other peoples right at 
 his own door. It is not for lack of experiments 
 that he has failed. He has robbed, starved, 
 slaughtered, bribed, used his whole artillery of 
 colonizing charms, and he is just where he was 
 when he started seven hundred and fifty years 
 ago. It is a very remarkable situation; it is 
 notably what the student physician would call an 
 
304 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 interesting case. It has been operated upon, it 
 has been drugged, it has had the fiercest massage 
 by sword, and the greatest variety of mud baths 
 and starvation diet, and it is still alive, still 
 kicking, still demanding some successful form 
 of treatment. 
 
 If, in addition to some little historical informa- 
 tion on the subject, one has lived in Ireland 
 months at a time as I have, the problem is all 
 the more puzzling. There is no better fellow 
 going than the Irishman. No one could be more 
 companionable, more sympathetic, more alive to 
 the opportunities of every and any situation. 
 The more you see of him at home, the more you 
 wonder what there is about him that has made 
 him and keeps him England's imperial and 
 colossal nuisance. It seems easy enough to get 
 along with him. He seems quite as open to the 
 ordinary amenities of life as other men. He is a 
 good sportsman, a fine soldier, and a gallant 
 comrade. 
 
 " And there isn't a weddin' at all, 
 A funeral or a fair. 
 Or any sort of fun or sport, 
 But me and the shtick is there, 
 Impatient to have our share." 
 
 His hospitality, though he be but poorly off 
 in this world's goods, is genial and unaffected, 
 
IRELAND 805 
 
 and though he be excitable, and not altogether 
 dependable — except in a row — there are other 
 peoples who are excitable and not dependable — 
 even in a row — who manage somehow to govern 
 themselves, and get on in the family of nations 
 without being kept in a school-boy's condition. 
 
 This splendid race of Saxons has been domi- 
 nant at a steadily increasing pace for a thousand 
 years here, there, everywhere. England cannot 
 live on an equality with any other nation. The 
 Englishman cannot live on an equality with any 
 other man. One need only hear the Englishman, 
 or the Englishwoman for that matter, say : " Oh 
 he is a Colonial!" or "Oh, he is a Frenchman," 
 or *'Oh, he is an American," to catch the subtle 
 distinction always made between an Englishman 
 and anybody and everybody else. 
 
 "I do not care about the opinion of foreigners," 
 said Mr. Chamberlain in one of his speeches, and 
 he voiced the national sentiment. But it should 
 be borne clearly in mind that this attitude is not 
 one of boastfulness. It is not a conscious or 
 artificial attitude which is purposely intended to 
 be disagreeable. It is not a pose, not conceit; 
 it is far worse than that. It is unconscious. It 
 is the natural condition of mind, born of centuries 
 of dominance. It is thoroughly parochial. Eng- 
 land knows no world but England. The Eng- 
 
506 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 lishman who is the greatest and most extensive 
 of travellers knows only Englishmen. This is 
 very impressive indeed. It makes him very 
 formidable, very impervious to any influence 
 toward intellectual orientation. It is one of the 
 important factors making toward the decadence 
 of the Empire. 
 
 What he will not do in Ireland, what he is 
 apparently constitutionally unable to do, he will 
 find it equally impossible to do elsewhere. He 
 has rivals now who will be equals ere long, and 
 who may prove to be superiors. The world that 
 was governed by brawn and bulk, and honesty 
 and fair play — always, be it understood, with 
 the Englishman as umpire as to what is and what 
 is not fair play — has become a wonderfully in- 
 tellectualized world since the days of his last 
 conquerings. 
 
 Commerce is a science, not mere courageous 
 piracy. Finance is a science, not mere loaning 
 accumulated wealth under the protection of 
 British guns. Government is a most compli- 
 cated manoeuvring of men, each one with a ballot 
 in his hand, not mere placating of one party of 
 aristocrats by another party of aristocrats, so that 
 both may live in peace and in power over the 
 people. German students shut up in laboratories 
 steal his trade. Japanese diligence, suavity and 
 
IRELAND S07 
 
 cunning steal his Eastern trade and his shipping. 
 He finds it to his benefit, and for his safety, to 
 ally himself with a pagan nation in the East, the 
 Japanese ; with an utterly unsympathetic nation, 
 the French, and a still less sympathetic nation, 
 the Russians, in Europe. His attitude toward 
 America in 1860-5, when Punch ridiculed Lin- 
 coln, and the press generally lamented such an 
 early death for the republic across the water, has 
 changed somewhat in its open expression, but 
 very little in spirit. But these things mean 
 nothing to the average Englishman. He has a 
 hazy notion that either he is not as rich as he 
 once was, or that other nations have grown to be 
 respectable rivals in wealth. He was, I must 
 admit, rather stunned by the South African war, 
 when an inconspicuous settlement of Dutchmen 
 cost him twenty-five thousand lives, and $1,250,- 
 000,000 in gold, before he conquered them. He 
 was stunned because this was something he could 
 understand readily. A fellow who can knock him 
 down is the kind of fellow he can appreciate. 
 These other, more subtle threads, in the shuttle 
 of the civilization and progress of nations, he only 
 faintly sees, and dimly understands. 
 
 This is, after all, a fine fellow I have been de- 
 scribing, but it is evident that he has his defects 
 and his weaknesses. Ireland seems to be the hot 
 
308 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 water bath that brings out the eruptions on the 
 English character, showing the need of a physi- 
 cian and a change. This is the reason why a 
 chapter on Ireland is a necessity in any notes 
 such as these on England and the English. 
 It is a distinctly fair illustration, because it is 
 not a matter of party politics, not a matter open 
 to question by the most prejudiced, not a matter 
 to be excused or explained by any of the usual 
 subterfuges of politics or patriotism, not a matter 
 in which other nations take any great interest and 
 which tempts a foreigner to have a biassed opin- 
 ion; it is simply seven hundred and fifty years 
 of failure to solve a domestic problem — seven 
 hundred and fifty years of inability to get on 
 with other men, a quality upon which the Eng- 
 lishman particularly prides himself. 
 
 One of two things must be true then: either 
 the Irishman is impossible to live with, or the 
 Englishman's superiority must have been shown 
 in the many cases where he has succeeded, 
 among inferior peoples; or, at any rate, a more 
 amenable, a more conquerable people, than the 
 Irish. There are some millions of Irishmen in 
 America, and though they do lend a certain 
 piquant and saline savor to our municipal poli- 
 tics, they are not altogether impossible to live 
 with. The Catholic population in and around 
 
IRELAND 309 
 
 Quebec largely outnumbers the Protestants, but 
 there is no trouble there. The race and the re- 
 ligion are apparently not wholly to blame. Whose 
 fault is it then.^ Fortunately we are not con- 
 cerned with a categorical answer to our own 
 question. Many able Englishmen have tilted 
 at this question without answering it. Our pur- 
 pose in leading up to the question, and asking it, 
 was only to bring out a characteristic of the 
 English. With them it is dominance or nothing 
 — aut Ccesar aut nullus. Dominance by com- 
 promise, or dominance by distasteful alliances, or 
 dominance even by bribery — as they bribed the 
 Danes to leave them in peace, or as they have 
 tried to bribe Ireland — dominance by intrigue, 
 or dominance by force, but nothing less than that. 
 They can rule in no other way, they can live 
 side by side with other peoples in no other way. 
 As we have seen in another chapter, they reward 
 success more generously, more magnificently, than 
 any other people in the world. Their House of 
 Lords is, as every one knows, not a chamber of 
 blood or birth, it is a chamber of the chosen suc- 
 cessful ones. They have no great ruling nobility 
 of high descent, they have an aristocracy of 
 success. Their peers are brewers, ship-builders, 
 soldiers, sailors, newspaper editors, manufactu- 
 rers of steel and iron, Jew financiers, mammoth 
 
310 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 shop-keepers, lawyers, chemists, and the Uke. 
 More than half of the present House of Lords 
 have been created since 1830. Thus they 
 recognize success, power, ability. Thus they be- 
 lieve that the world belongs to those who take it. 
 Thus they shoulder you on one side, penetrate 
 to the far ends of the earth, claim everything, 
 fight for everything. If they cannot beat you, 
 they let you alone, but as for living with you on 
 terms of equality, never ! But they feel bound to 
 live with Ireland. Ireland cannot be allowed 
 the liberty to make friends and alliances with 
 France, or with Germany, or with Japan, or with 
 America. Ireland cannot be allowed to interfere 
 with the Orangemen, the Protestants who live 
 in the north of Ireland. England cannot give up 
 Ireland, and she cannot make Ireland acknowl- 
 edge her superiority; and one or the other is 
 necessary for peace between them. One wonders 
 why Lord Curzon, or Lord Cromer, or Lord 
 Milner, or perhaps a soldier like Lord Kitchener, 
 is not given a free hand in Ireland for a given 
 number of years. Anything would be better for 
 the prestige, self-respect, and fair fame of Eng- 
 land than that she should continue — she the 
 modest, she the moral, she the law-abiding, she 
 the patronizing and preaching nation of the 
 world — that she should continue this squabbling. 
 
IRELAND 311 
 
 hair-pulling, scratching, this vulgar domestic 
 vituperation, to the amusement perhaps of the 
 light minded, but to the wonderment and scandal 
 of all serious minded men of all other nations. 
 
 Another reason why she does continue is pre- 
 cisely another characteristic of England, and the 
 English, worth noting and keeping in mind. As 
 a r^ce they have no nerves. They are protected 
 from most, I may say all, of the minor troubles, 
 trials, griefs, which annoy, upset, and even drag 
 into their graves, other more sensitive people, by 
 a non-conductor of insensibility. The most 
 amazing thing about the English and Irish em- 
 broglio is that the English look upon it as a 
 matter of course ! They are constitutionally sure 
 that they are right. Are we not the most God- 
 fearing, the most humane, the most just and the 
 most Christian nation ? they say to themselves ; 
 then how is it possible that we can have murdered, 
 starved, driven into exile, robbed, bribed, and 
 pompously maltreated our brother Irishman ? 
 But they have done it. There is no doubt in 
 any man's mind about that. Think of the 
 callousness, the insensibility to pain and starva- 
 tion and murder, of a people who for seven odd 
 centuries can live in such relations with a 
 weaker neighbor. Picture the quite impossible 
 situation for the French, or the Italians, or the 
 
312 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Americans, or the Germans. We could not 
 stand the strain of it. It would get on our nerves. 
 It would irritate us beyond all expression. We 
 could not push it on one side and go about our 
 business unconcerned and unpitying. Much less 
 could Frenchmen, or Italians, or even Germans, 
 take such a matter-of-fact view of such a problem. 
 This has been a very valuable quality to the 
 English in their conquering of, and ruling of, 
 other peoples. In countless other ways one 
 might illustrate this sort of well-fed impervious- 
 ness to the common griefs and annoyances of 
 life; but in so doing, one might press harshly 
 upon their social and domestic life, and make 
 these notes assume an air of prejudice or bitter- 
 ness, which is the last thing in the mind of the 
 writer, and, above all things, to be avoided. This 
 illustration of Ireland is all sufficient to prove the 
 point, and at the same time avoids personalities. 
 One has only to picture any other nation, except 
 perhaps Russia, living contentedly, going about 
 its affairs, superbly unconscious of any wrong 
 on its own part, with this gigantic, centuries old, 
 social sore a part of its social and political body. 
 One has only to picture such a thing to make 
 plain this characteristic English trait of confident 
 and stolid self-satisfaction. This trait eclipses 
 even their rather ostentatious claim to be a dis- 
 
IRELAND 313 
 
 tinctly religious nation. The anima naturaliter 
 christianissima is a rare thing in England, though 
 the profession of religion is not only a State 
 affair, but practically universal. They wear their 
 religion as a formal garment. It never has, and 
 does not to-day, soften in the least the overbear- 
 ing temperament, interfere with wars of com- 
 mercial aggression, or condemn immorality in 
 the highest places. The overmastering qualities 
 of a conquering race are but slightly colored by 
 their religion. It is an affair of the State. One 
 is loyal to it as one is loyal to the King, but, as a 
 nation apparently, the general aims and purposes, 
 and the methods of working them out, are not 
 materially affected by the mandates of giving the 
 cloak also, turning the other cheek, or not wor- 
 shipping Mammon. The Irish question is in 
 no danger of settlement by an appeal to the 
 Englishman's religious sentiments. Nothing ap- 
 parently can influence, or mitigate, these prime 
 characteristics, illustrated by the treatment of 
 Ireland: the worship of success and supremacy, 
 and the stolid indifference to anything and every- 
 thing which interferes with the Englishman's 
 obtaining them. 
 
VIII 
 
 AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 
 
 TO announce too much of what one means 
 to do is the best way not to do it at all," 
 says Tallyrand. We all know how 
 dangerous it is to promise pleasure to others from 
 what has pleased us. Our dearest friend may 
 seem but a dull dog to the stranger to whom we 
 introduce him. The book, the play, the picture, 
 the tour in a new country, the hotel in which we 
 have been comfortable, all these we may praise 
 to another, and he only finds them common- 
 place or positively disagreeable. 
 
 There are, however, two things that I dare 
 announce to the traveller as superlatively beau- 
 tiful. If he be disappointed the fault is his, and 
 not my praise of them. The pictures of Velas- 
 quez in the Prado at Madrid and an English 
 country landscape in May surpass any possible 
 preliminary praise of them. You may announce 
 what you will, but the reality still surpasses the 
 
 promise. 
 
 314 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 315 
 
 Twenty miles out of London, and the sun is 
 shining, and the train glides along with green 
 fields, hedges of hawthorne, trees blossoming on 
 every side. England looks to be the huge 
 well-cared-for farm of a Croesus. The absence 
 of much sunlight, so distressing to the American 
 in London, is an advantage now. True, the 
 country is an old country, and had been ploughed 
 and planted and harrowed for close on to a 
 thousand years before America was even dis- 
 covered. This gives the country-side a mellow- 
 ness and well-groomed look, and the vaporous 
 sunlight softens all the outlines, hides the harsh 
 features, and gives the landscape the dreamy, 
 far-away, misty loveliness of a mirage. Just 
 now the fields that are not brown, having been 
 turned up for sowing, are of a delicate green, and 
 hundreds of sheep and lambs scurry about as 
 the train flies by. If I were an Englishman, it 
 seems to me that I should grow positively thirsty 
 for this scene if I were long away from it. There 
 seem to be no angles; field melts into field, and 
 hedge into hedge, with here and there a ribbon of 
 road which seems to join rather than to separate 
 them. The houses, big and little, are all of 
 brick or stone and have the advantage of lending 
 their interstices to ivy and climbing roses, and 
 the older they are the softer the color and out- 
 
316 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 line. Houses of wood look to be dishevelled and 
 shabby as they grow old, while brick and stone 
 are the more dignified the older they grow. 
 
 I believe it is true that the midlands of England 
 are as fertile and easily cultivated as any similar 
 number of acres in the world, and to the eye of 
 the traveller they seem so. 
 
 But where are all the people ? Did we leave 
 them all in London, and Oxford, and Worcester, 
 and Birmingham.^ All through the afternoon 
 and into the early evening we travel, and I could 
 have counted more houses, certainly more sheep, 
 than men and women from the carriage window. 
 It may be a holiday, it may be the day's work is 
 finished, it may be that the laborers, slow- 
 moving, and sombrely clad in grays and browns, 
 are not so distinctly seen in this soft light. In 
 any case, it seems as though one might step out 
 and take possession of as much of this lovely 
 country as one cared to, and this adds still 
 another quality to the charm. There is solitude 
 without loneliness. It is so well cared for, so 
 gentle and cultivated in appearance, that one 
 feels the centuries of human toil, the intimate 
 companionship of men, but without their inter- 
 ruption. 
 
 England is London says one, England is 
 Parliament says another, England is the Empire 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 317 
 
 says still another ; but if I be not much mistaken, 
 this stretch of green fields, these hills and valleys, 
 these hedges and fruit trees, this soft landscape, 
 is the England men love. In India and Canada 
 and Australia, in their ships at sea, in their knots 
 of soldiery all over the world, Englishmen must 
 close their eyes at times, and when they do they 
 se6 these fields green and brown, these hedges 
 dusted with the soft snow of blossoms, these 
 houses hung with roses and ivy, and when the 
 eyes open they are moist with these memories. 
 The pioneer, the sailor, the soldier, the colonist, 
 may fight, and struggle, and suffer, and proclaim 
 his pride in his new home, in his new possessions, 
 but these are the love of a wife, of children, of 
 friends; that other is the love, with its touch of 
 adoration, that is not less, nor more, but still 
 different, that mysterious mingling of care for, 
 and awe of, the one who brought you into the 
 world. 
 
 This is the England, I take it, that makes one 
 feel his duty to be his religion, and the England 
 that every American comes to as to a shrine. 
 When this is sunk in the sea, or trampled over 
 by a host of invading Germans, or mauled into 
 bankruptcy by pandering politicians and sour 
 socialists, one of the most delightful spots in the 
 whole world will have been lost; and no artist 
 
318 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 will ever be able to paint such a picture again, 
 for nowhere else is there just this texture of can- 
 vas, just this quality of pigment, just these fifteen 
 centuries of atmosphere. 
 
 One cannot describe every country town in 
 England, so I have chosen the one I love best. 
 If it is more beautiful than other country towns, 
 if I am partial, even prejudiced, in regard to it, 
 so much the better. Criticism seldom errs too 
 much on the kindly side. 
 
 This particular town had a castle, built by no 
 less a person than a daughter of the great King 
 Alfred, who led his Saxon neighbors in driving 
 off the Danes. This town had a charter granted 
 to it by the King three hundred years before 
 Columbus sailed into the west. It is an old town 
 even for England, its hoary antiquity drifts out 
 beyond the harbor of American imagination into 
 an unknown sea. To an American it is almost 
 too old to be true. One might as well say in an 
 Oklahoma village that Adam lived here! At 
 such a distance of time years are too indistinct 
 to be worth numbering. The town hall stood 
 in the main street, and still stands there, when 
 the Mayflower set sail, and one of the local inns 
 was an old established hostelry before we made 
 our first noise in the world, taking pot-shots at 
 the red-coats near Lexington. The members of 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 319 
 
 one family represented the town in Parliament 
 for several centuries, and the old corn mill dates 
 back almost to the days of Charlemagne. 
 
 In a wholesome old age the features, the 
 speech, the manners, the opinions soften; thus 
 a gentle old lady has a charm that no youthful 
 maiden, be she ever so beautiful, can rival. As 
 for men, I wonder that any woman is willing to 
 marry a man under forty. So it is with a town. 
 Not Time itself can ever console us for the lack 
 of this long vista back through the centuries. 
 Neither dollars nor energy can manufacture 
 mellowness. 
 
 There is no lack of manuals, documents, and 
 erudite treatises on the economic, political, re- 
 ligious and social life of England. The student 
 need only look through the catalogue of any large 
 library to find data for the support of his 
 theories, or theories with which to confirm his 
 data. But when all is known that has been 
 written on the laws and traditions and customs 
 that influence the life of a nation, there still re- 
 mains the peculiar atmosphere, the social climate, 
 that thermometers and barometers can only 
 register; they can no more describe them than a 
 box of colors can paint a picture. This must be 
 acknowledged in describing an English country 
 town. 
 
320 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Given the differences between a republic and 
 a monarchy ; between a new country and an old 
 country; a country where there are still millions 
 of acres of unoccupied land, and a country where 
 the land is in the hands of a comparatively few 
 landlords ; a country that has had free education 
 ever since it was settled, and a country where 
 education was for centuries considered undesir- 
 able, or, at any rate, unnecessary, for the masses; 
 a nation where distinctions of class are recog- 
 nized in the constitution itself, and a country 
 where no such distinctions, political or social, 
 are generally accepted; and even then there are 
 still differences which cannot be tagged with 
 names, but which are plants centuries old, and 
 having qualities not to be analyzed, qualities 
 like those of old pictures or old wines, born of 
 age. 
 
 The moment the stranger puts questions to his 
 neighbor in this English town — a town, I may 
 say in passing, of about six thousand inhabitants 
 — the first differences discover themselves. The 
 Englishman of Northbridge in England does not 
 know as much, nor does he take as much interest 
 in the affairs of his town, as does the American 
 of Bear's Cove, Massachusetts. The whole 
 machinery of local government, until very lately, 
 was based upon traditions, the origins of which 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 321 
 
 are only known to the antiquary or the student. 
 In England laws are almost always the outgrowth 
 of custom and tradition; in America the laws 
 were made brand new for a particular purpose, 
 easily recognizable by the least profound ob- 
 server. In England the laws of the land are 
 helped out by the fact that the same customs and 
 habits which made the laws also made the man 
 who obeys them, and he wears them like a well- 
 worn suit of clothes. In America the man made 
 the laws, and feels rather superior to them, as one 
 might feel toward clothes not altogether com- 
 fortable in their fit. This is part of the secret of 
 the law-abidingness of the Englishman and the 
 American tendency to law-defyingness. It is not 
 strange then that the American knows more about 
 the affairs of his town than does the Englishman. 
 One would naturally be better informed about 
 one's own children than about one's ancestors. 
 
 In England, too, the people have not had the 
 franchise long, and consequently the masses are 
 not yet accustomed to feel, or to take upon them- 
 selves, much political responsibility. The mid- 
 dle and lower classes are only just beginning to 
 question the political and social status quo. For 
 centuries it has not occurred to them that things 
 could be other than they are. "It has always 
 been so" has been until lately the stupefying 
 
322 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 reason for letting things alone. America, on the 
 contrary, was born of revolt against the political, 
 social and religious status quo, and England was 
 left for two hundred years more of " it has always 
 been so," when her rebellious ones sailed away to 
 Virginia and Massachusetts. 
 
 In America, politics ranks as one of the 
 domestic virtues; in England politics has been, 
 and is largely even now, the obligatory occupa- 
 tion of the few who can afford it, though this 
 state of things is rapidly changing in both town 
 and country since the widening of the franchise 
 and the passing of the Corporation Act. In 
 America it may almost be set down as an incon- 
 trovertible proposition that no man of Lord 
 Rosebery's wealth and social position, for exam- 
 ple, could be elected President of the United 
 States. In England until the last few years no 
 man could have hoped to succeed in politics 
 without a private income; in America nothing 
 is such an awkward handicap as great wealth, 
 while if part of this wealth were spent in the inno- 
 cent recreation of keeping a racing-stable, polit- 
 ical preferment would be absolutely prohibited. 
 The English people as a whole still look to 
 wealth and position to govern them, while in 
 America the people are still jealous, not to say 
 unreasonably suspicious, of wealth and power. 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 323 
 
 These are the larger, the enveloping reasons 
 why the American in his country town takes more 
 interest in its political affairs than does the Eng- 
 lishman in his. The Englishman's town was 
 made for him, and the centuries have swathed 
 it in customs that are almost sacred. The 
 American's town he made himself, and he 
 looks upon it not as a graven image, but as a 
 model of clay that may be often and easily 
 altered without sacrilege and probably with ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 The country town in England serves as well to 
 exploit all these national differences as though 
 it were England under a microscope. The 
 classes are as distinctly marked as though they 
 wore uniforms. At the base of the social pyra- 
 mid are the agricultural laborers earning from 
 $2.50 to $3.25 a week; fifty per cent, of the labor- 
 ers in England earn twenty-five shillings a week 
 or less. A fact worth remembering when we 
 revise our tariff! Then the farm servants and 
 house servants of the small gentry, earning, the 
 men from $90 to $250 a year, the women from 
 $60 to $125 a year; then the shop-keepers and 
 their assistants and employees; then the richer 
 merchants, and mill or factory owners, and rank- 
 ing with them the local professional men, lawyers, 
 doctors, Dissenting ministers, land agents, and 
 
324 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the like; next come the gentlemen farmers and 
 landed proprietors, and the clergy of the Church 
 of England; and finally the county gentlemen 
 and the neighboring nobility, with the lord lieu- 
 tenant of the county, qften a great noble, as the 
 official and political apex. 
 
 The manufacturer, mill-owner, and the like 
 receives of course both social and official recog- 
 nition according to his success and his wealth. 
 As we have noted elsewhere, the successful 
 brewer or manufacturer often crowns his career 
 by being made a peer, when he leaves his own 
 class and enters another. The same is true of 
 the great lawyer, the successful politician, and 
 so on. I may be mistaken, but I believe the 
 physician is the only representative of success in 
 the professions who thus far has failed to reach 
 the dignity of the peerage. 
 
 In the New England town I have in mind — 
 and very proud I am to keep it in my memory — 
 of about the same size and relative importance as 
 the English town I am describing, the governor 
 of the State, who happens to live there, and the 
 cashier of the local bank, and the shop-keeper, 
 if he chance to be an interesting companion on 
 account of his antiquarian knowledge, and the 
 editor of the small local newspaper, if he be of 
 intelligent proportions, would meet at one 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 325 
 
 another's houses, if their common tastes made it 
 agreeable. But it would be considered the height 
 of social glory in this English town should a 
 shop-keeper, no matter how big the shop, or 
 a bank cashier, no matter what his erudition, 
 or even a physician or small solicitor, or small 
 factory proprietor, find himself on equal terms 
 at the table of one of the county nobility, much 
 more at the table of the lord lieutenant of the 
 county, except on some occasion of a formal 
 function. Though the lord lieutenant of the 
 county is usually a man of rank, he may be in 
 no sense superior in social weight to other no- 
 bles in the county ; for the time being he out- 
 ranks them by right of his office. 
 
 If you cannot be a duke with a large rent-roll 
 in England, by all means be an agreeable Amer- 
 ican, for to one and the other all doors are open. 
 You dine with all classes, and all are willing to 
 dine with you. No one is jealous of you, no one 
 envious; no one suspects you of pride or vain- 
 glory, because, being a sovereign yourself, you are 
 equally at home with sovereigns or with the peo- 
 ple abroad. No one else can have the inestima- 
 ble privilege of warm friendships with all classes, 
 and consequently an intimate knowledge of the 
 ways of life, of men and women of every social 
 grade. 
 
326 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Just as the wages are smaller, so the salaries 
 and incomes are smaller among these people 
 than with us. The largest house in the town, 
 built of brick, with garden, green-house and 
 small stable, and containing rooms ample for the 
 accommodation of a family of six, keeping a 
 governess and seven servants, keeping two 
 horses and doing a fair amount of entertaining — 
 such an establishment as this can be kept going, 
 without painstaking economy, on an income of 
 $6,000 or $7,000 a year. In no place in America 
 would the upkeep of a similar establishment for 
 such a sum be humanly possible. In the first 
 place, the governess and seven servants would 
 require in wages $2,500 a year, while a similar 
 staff in England would cost somewhere in the 
 vicinity of $900 a year. This particular house 
 was in the town itself, and was far more comfort- 
 able than the majority of the houses in the town. 
 People with an average income of from one 
 thousand to three thousand dollars a year live in 
 far more convenient houses in America than in 
 England. The matter of water, heat, lighting, 
 suitable kitchens and laundries is insisted upon 
 with us, and is lacking to an apalling extent in 
 English country or even town houses, and also 
 in the more pretentious country houses them- 
 selves. The houses of the poorer classes, labor- 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 327 
 
 ers, clerks, servants and the like are mere boxes, 
 with none of the conveniences to which Amer- 
 icans even of the poorer classes are accustomed. 
 Hundreds of thousands of Americans live in 
 houses admirably equipped as to bathrooms, 
 lighting and heating conveniences and the like, 
 where hundreds are thus housed in England. 
 Indeed America is in a class quite by herself, so 
 far as mechanical contrivances for personal com- 
 fort are concerned, as compared with England, 
 or any other country in the world. The average 
 level of comfort is far higher than anywhere else, 
 whatever may be said as to the satisfaction of the 
 rarer and more luxurious and more refined de- 
 mands of the more cultivated. At any rate, 
 America is easily chief among dwelling-places 
 where mediocrity has nearest approached to its 
 millennium. Rent, clothes, service, wines, beer, 
 spirits, tobacco, all are cheaper in the English 
 than in the American town, and prices of meats, 
 vegetables, bread, butter, poultry, eggs much the 
 same. In this particular town in Shropshire, how- 
 ever, the beef and mutton, though costing about 
 the same amount, or a little less, per pound, are 
 very much better than in a similar town in Massa- 
 chusetts, are of as fine a quality, indeed, as the 
 very best beef and mutton served in the best 
 hotels and restaurants in New York. As you walk 
 
328 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 through the covered outer entrance to the door 
 of the local inn, you may taste the preliminary 
 joys of the carnivorous gastronome, for there are 
 hanging the joints of beef and mutton, the beef 
 getting that black-purple look which promises 
 tenderness, and at dinner the visual promise is 
 kept to the full. There is no such mutton in the 
 world as a Welsh sheep fattened on the luscious 
 grass of these hills and valleys. 
 
 "The mountain sheep were sweeter 
 But the valley sheep were fatter 
 So we thought it would be meeter 
 To carry off the latter." 
 
 But in the sheep from Wales fattened here one 
 has both the sweet and the fat. Alas! the prep- 
 aration of food in this town, as in all others I 
 know, and in London itself, except where foreign 
 cooks and foreign methods are used, is by no 
 means equal in quality to the materials provided. 
 The only thing that can be said in praise of 
 English cookery is, that one is never tempted to 
 eat too much! It satisfies legitimate hunger 
 amply, but is never a temptation to gourman- 
 dizing. With all these fertile fields, it is a 
 ceaseless source of wonder to the traveller that 
 England should have nothing but potatoes and 
 cabbage, and sea-kale, and vegetable marrow, day 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 329 
 
 after day, and year in and year out, and import 
 millions of pounds worth of eggs — some of 
 them from as far away as Russia — butter, 
 cheese, poultry, salads and small vegetables. 
 On the other hand, the home-cured ham and 
 bacon, at my friend's house in a neighboring 
 county, his beef and his mutton, and his famous 
 band of sturdy children, make one pause to 
 remember that by their fruits ye shall know 
 them. To those who have enough of bread, and 
 beer, and beef, and bacon, and plain vegetables, 
 and to boot plenty of out-door exercise and a 
 somewhat varied social life, this diet is evidently 
 well suited. These English, Scotch, and Irish 
 men and women of the well-fed and well-cared- 
 for classes are the sturdiest of the human race. 
 No doubt my own experience is that of others, 
 that you can bear more physical fatigue on this 
 diet, and in this climate, than in America. The 
 hard work of shooting over dogs in Scotland, of 
 four and sometimes five days a week hunting in 
 Ireland, can be kept up for weeks on end, with 
 only a pleasurable sense of fatigue; while in our 
 electrical climate, I am personally, at least, able to 
 do only, say, two-thirds as much. Our athletic 
 performances bear me out in this assertion. At 
 the hundred yards, the two hundred and twenty, 
 and quarter mile, at the high jump and other 
 
330 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 contests where rapidity and tremendous momen- 
 tary exertion are required, we beat the English; 
 while at the mile, three miles, and other tests of 
 endurance rather than speed, they beat us. 
 
 Probably the most noticeable difference be- 
 tween two such towns, the one in America, the 
 other in England, is the entire absence of for- 
 eigners in the latter. In the house I know best 
 at home, out of a staff of some ten or more people, 
 only one is an American, and he is the gardener, 
 and in all the fundamentals he is a gentleman if 
 there ever was one. The others are from Ire- 
 land, England, Sweden, and France ; France, of 
 course, supplying the governess. But here in the 
 English town they are all English. In America 
 the rough work of the laborer is all done by the 
 foreigners, the servants are all foreigners, the 
 common schools are filled with foreigners, the 
 paupers are practically all foreigners. I have 
 lived in America in the South, and West, and 
 East for many years, and I puzzle my brains, and 
 prod my memory, but I cannot recall that I have 
 ever come in contact with an American pauper, 
 though I know of course that there must be such. 
 This must account for the fact that pauperism 
 seems to be taken so much more for granted in 
 England than in America. On Saturday, April 
 the eleventh, 1908, there were nearly one hundred 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 331 
 
 and twenty-five thousand persons receiving in- 
 door and out-door relief in London alone, and 
 they were practically all English. One feels 
 differently perhaps about being a pauper if other 
 paupers are of one's own breed, so, too, one feels 
 differently about helping them. They are a 
 recognized class in England, but no American, 
 despite the distress, vagabondage, and poverty in 
 our great cities, has taught himself to accept 
 pauperism as a necessary condition of masses 
 of his own race, and as a necessary tax upon the 
 State. There are hundreds of towns all over 
 America where a confirmed and recognized pau- 
 per would be as great a curiosity as the man 
 skeleton or the fat woman of a travelling circus. 
 I question if this be true of any single town in 
 England. 
 
 On the other hand, this fact of the homogeneity 
 of the race makes for mutual understanding and 
 solidarity. In spite of the social gradations we 
 have noted, the common grounds of intercourse 
 are nowhere so many as here : witness the cricket, 
 the hunting field; the dog and horse and agri- 
 cultural and flower shows ; the friendly and even 
 confidential relations between the landowner and 
 his farmers, bailiffs, woodsmen, trainers, jockeys, 
 huntsmen, and so on. There are no false dis- 
 tinctions, only real distinctions, so the English 
 
332 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 claim, and no one *but a fool or an ape cares to 
 break them down. On ground where men can 
 meet without self -consciousness, they do meet; 
 but why should men who meet because they play 
 cricket, or ride to hounds, or breed dogs, or love 
 flowers, wish to meet in the drawing-room, or at 
 the dinner-table, where they have not the same 
 experience, the same opportunities, or common 
 tastes ? 
 
 Nowhere do men of sympathetic interests meet 
 more often and more easily, without thought of 
 social distinctions, than here, and no doubt this 
 is due to the fact that differences of social rank 
 are fixed, and universally recognized and ac- 
 cepted. The general understanding of this 
 rather paradoxical social situation, and the 
 smoothness with which social life moves, is due 
 again to this fact that they are all English. This 
 is a key to the understanding of one another, 
 which, while it defies analysis, must be recog- 
 nized as important. Peoples who speak a differ- 
 ent language never fully understand one another, 
 and even when they speak the same language, 
 as in the case of the Americans and the Eng- 
 lish, they constantly fail to see eye to eye to 
 one another. We give the same words a different 
 shade of meaning, just as we give them a differ- 
 ent intonation. These people, all of one race, 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 333 
 
 from highest to lowest, master and man, have an 
 advantage of mutual understanding and a kind 
 of taciturn sympathy with one another that are 
 priceless in solving many of their problems. 
 
 The very machinery of government in the town 
 itself runs more easily for this fact. G9ing from 
 small to great, the Parish is the smallest unit in 
 England, having a Parish Council, or, if very 
 small, a Parish Meeting. Groups of Parishes 
 form the Union, the Union being the unit for the 
 administration of the Poor Law. Unions again, 
 where a Borough is concerned, are divided into 
 "Borough" and "District," i.e. Town and 
 Country. Their respective Councils deal with 
 roads, sanitary matters, etc., etc. Groups of 
 Unions form the County, which deals with main 
 roads, education, lunatics, and so on. In some 
 eases a Union is partly in one County and partly 
 in another; then it is divided for County pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The English town of Northbridge is governed 
 as to water, lighting, roads, sanitary matters and 
 the like, by a Mayor, and a Town Council over 
 which he presides. The Town Councillors are 
 elected by the voters of the Borough, who consist 
 of all property owners, practically all occupiers 
 of any taxable property, and lodgers who pay a 
 certain specified sum for their lodgings. Even 
 
334 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the sons in a family, twenty-one years of age or 
 over, and living at home, must become lodgers in 
 their own homes, they must have rooms of their 
 own in the house, which they may lock up against 
 their parents, and they must, as has been said, 
 pay a certain sum therefor, viz., ten pounds un- 
 furnished, to entitle them to vote. Women, too, 
 may vote for the Councillors, but not for Parlia- 
 mentary candidates. Married women may not 
 vote, and other women, spinsters and widows, 
 must be property owners, or lodgers paying a 
 certain sum, and coming under the same rules 
 as to their right to vote as men. This privilege 
 is exercised in certain places, and in certain polit- 
 ical crises appealing particularly to women very 
 largely. In other places and at other times 
 scarcely at all. It is not a matter that can be 
 settled by giving figures, since the numbers differ 
 widely. In New Zealand, where the women may 
 vote, but where they have not been obliged to 
 fight for the privilege, they care very little for it, 
 and seldom exercise their right. To what extent 
 the novelty of the franchise may influence the 
 women voters in England it is as yet too early to 
 decide. For the moment it is evident that the 
 majority make comparatively little use of their 
 right to the ballot. At this present writing there 
 are 1,141 women on Boards of Guardians: 2 on 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 335 
 
 Urban District Councils; 146 on Rural District 
 Councils; and 615 on Education Committees. 
 The Councillors elect so many Aldermen, and 
 from their own number the Aldermen and Coun- 
 cillors elect the Mayor. In the case of North- 
 bridge, the town is divided into wards for the 
 purposes of elections, but this is not so in all 
 towns. When a Town Councillor is elected an 
 Alderman, it creates a vacancy in his ward, and 
 there follows another election. These elections 
 take place every three years. The Aldermen are 
 elected for six years, and half of them retire 
 every three years. This system, however, only 
 dates from 1882, the year of the passing of the 
 Corporation Act by Parliament. 
 
 The Schools are controlled: (1) by Parlia- 
 ment, (2) by the County Council, (3) by local 
 managers. Parliament is represented by the 
 Board of Education, whose inspectors visit and 
 report on all schools, and the government grant 
 of money is only paid to such schools as satisfy 
 the government requirements as to eflSciency. 
 
 The County Council, through its Education 
 Committee, pays the teachers, fixes their sala- 
 ries, and provides all equipment, such as books, 
 black-boards, furniture, coal, and so on. The 
 government grant is paid at the rate of so much 
 per child to the County Council, who make up 
 
336 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the deficiency by levying a tax over the whole 
 county. The tax in this particular county in 
 1907 was, for elementary education five pence 
 halfpenny in the pound, and for secondary 
 education one-half pence in the pound, or, for 
 both taxes, twelve and a half cents on every five 
 dollars. 
 
 The local managers are six for each school, 
 divided as follows: four Foundation Managers, 
 appointed under the trust deeds of the several 
 schools; one appointed by the Town Council, 
 and one by the County Council. 
 
 In Northbridge there are four schools, though 
 one, the Blue Coat School, a Foundation school, 
 is very small and rather an exceptional case. 
 The three schools which practically serve the 
 town are: the school in the Parish of the High 
 Town, the school in the Parish of the Low Town 
 (these are merely geographical distinctions), 
 which are both Church of England schools, and 
 the school of the Roman Catholic Parish. In 
 very many towns there are Council schools direct- 
 ly under popular control, but in Northbridge, 
 which is a staunch Tory town, in a staunch Tory 
 county, there are none. 
 
 Practically all of the appointments to the local 
 subordinate offices are made by the Town 
 Council, and are not elective, the auditor being 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 337 
 
 one of the few office-holders who is elective. In 
 the matter of licenses for public houses, a much 
 vexed question just now, the licenses are granted 
 annually by the local justices to old license hold- 
 ers, but in the case of applications for new 
 licenses, or of a refusal to renew an old one, the 
 local justices refer the matter to the County 
 Justices, or the Court of Quarter Sessions, who 
 deal with such questions through the County 
 Licensing Committee. The local justices also 
 grant licenses for buildings where stage plays may 
 be acted and the like. 
 
 Justice, in a borough or town like North- 
 bridge, is administered' by Borough Justices, 
 who are mostly local tradesmen and professional 
 men; they deal with small offences at Petty 
 Sessions. More serious offences are dealt with 
 at the Borough Quarter Sessions, presided over 
 by a Recorder, who is a barrister and a paid 
 official, with a jury. Still more serious offences 
 are sent up to the County Town, in this instance 
 the Town of Shrewsbury, and tried before a 
 Judge of Assize. 
 
 In the County District, the Magistrates as a 
 rule are local gentry. They sit in the town itself 
 for Petty Sessions, and in the County Town for 
 Quarter Sessions, when, in place of a Recorder, 
 they select one of their own number as chairman. 
 
338 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 who is also unpaid. He is, however, usually a 
 barrister, and I know of one instance where a 
 gentleman studied law merely to fit himself to 
 occupy this position in his own neighborhood 
 creditably. Here again the most serious offen- 
 ders, as with Borough offenders, are tried at 
 Assizes. The offender himself in some cases 
 may demand to be tried by the higher court. 
 These unpaid magistrates are suggested by the 
 Lord Lieutenant, and appointed by the Lord 
 Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor is an officer 
 of the government which may at the moment be 
 in power, the Lord Lieutenant of the County is 
 not necessarily so. When these gentlemen hap- 
 pen to belong to different political parties, it is 
 hinted that the Lord Chancellor sometimes ap- 
 points magistrates without consulting the Lord 
 Lieutenant. This is not often done, and the 
 arrangement on the whole works without fric- 
 tion. To be a County Magistrate is the ambi- 
 tion of many men, and the gift of this distinction 
 is rarely if ever mischievously bestowed. It is 
 not supposed to be a question of party politics, 
 but of personal worth, and there is no complaint 
 that the party in power misuses this privilege. 
 These amateur magistrates make mistakes, and 
 Mr. Labouchere and Truth devote many para- 
 graphs to their shortcomings, but the system 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 339 
 
 works so well that there are seldom complaints 
 from the class who are judged by them, and over 
 whom they exercise control. It is generally held 
 by those who come before them that more leni- 
 ency may be expected from these unpaid magis- 
 trates, than would be shown by paid magistrates. 
 
 The clergy of the Church of England are State 
 officials, for marriage and funeral purposes, and 
 together with the church wardens, control church 
 property. They are also ex-ofjicio chairmen of 
 their respective vestries, but vestry meetings now- 
 adays are of historical rather than practical 
 interest. They are often also, under certain 
 trust deeds, trustees of the schools and Parish 
 charities and not infrequently ex-ofjicio chairmen 
 of the Trustees, or School Managers. 
 
 The clergy of the time of Swift, Sterne, and 
 Addison were not precisely of the gentleman 
 class. They were placed below the salt, and 
 often mated with the upper servants. There 
 seems to be a falling off again now in the quality 
 of the inferior clergy. I know of a neighbor's 
 nurse-maid who is engaged to a curate, and they 
 no longer occupy the position of influence of half 
 a century ago. This may not be wholly local, 
 for no one can doubt the decreased influence of 
 the clergy of New England, in the last fifty years. 
 Up to, and during the time of the struggle be- 
 
340 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 tween North and South in America, the Unita- 
 rians of New England, and the Presbyterians and 
 Dutch Reform ministers elsewhere were not only 
 the moral, but the civil leaders of the people. 
 One can count such clergymen now on the 
 fingers of one's hands. Such men as President 
 Eliot of Harvard, ex-President Cleveland and Mr. 
 Joseph Choate have carried far more weight in 
 their own local affairs and in the country at large, 
 than any clergyman I can mention, unless it be 
 perhaps Bishop Potter and Rev. Dr. Edward Ev- 
 erett Hale, when in the full vigor of his powers. 
 It is by no means intended to infer from this state- 
 ment that the bulk of the clergy are not hard work- 
 ing or without influence. In the country districts 
 they are valuable public servants, and, according 
 to their willingness, lend a hand here, there, and 
 everywhere. But, with many exceptions of course, 
 they receive nowadays more of social rank from 
 their position as clergymen than they bring to 
 that position. One often hears the lament that 
 it is not easy to get a curate who is a gentleman — 
 using that word, of course, in its limited technical 
 sense understood in England. The temptation 
 to men of a certain social grade and of moderate 
 abilities to go into the church is of course great, 
 when thereby they can, without much exertion 
 become members of a profession which gives 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 341 
 
 them a standing that neither their birth nor their 
 intellectual powers would have won for them in 
 any other way. This is true also in America, 
 where there are hundreds of ministers of all 
 denominations who owe their position to their 
 profession and who would at once sink out of 
 sight were they not buoyed up by their profession. 
 Though it is both in England and America the 
 noblest calling of the noble, it is also largely used 
 as a refuge by the incompetent and the contempt- 
 ible. No man has a right there who is not man 
 enough to hold his own anywhere. There are 
 still examples in England of parsons who are only 
 clergymen in name; men who wear the uniform, 
 but who not only hunt, but are masters of packs 
 of foxhounds themselves; men who shoot, and 
 farm, and are what Sydney Smith described as 
 half county squire and half parson, under the 
 name of "Squarsons." One of these died only 
 the other day, who had been Master of Hounds 
 for forty years. Such men may say, perfunctorily, 
 Benedictus benedicat before meals, but beyond 
 that their clerical duties are purely formal. This 
 stamp of cleric is dying out, though it may be 
 doubted whether the clerical snob, without public 
 school or university behind him, is an improve- 
 ment or even an equivalent. There are men in 
 this English town whose fathers well remember a 
 
342 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 certain rector who went home from the tap-room 
 of The Swan every Saturday night with his legs 
 in a wabbly state of drunkenness, whatever may 
 have been the condition of his head. That type 
 of man has, of course, disappeared never to return. 
 The fact that the clergyman is in an indepen- 
 dent position as regards his parishioners, since 
 he is not looking to them either for his salary or 
 for retention in his place, gives him a freedom 
 that is valuable. However much of a heretic a 
 man may be, he may admit that the Church of 
 England anjd the Roman Catholics have much 
 to be said in praise of their adherence to the 
 logically sound arrangement that the preacher 
 and teacher should not be obliged to look directly 
 to those whom he teaches, for his means of sub- 
 sistence. There are numbers of men whom we 
 all know, both in England and in America, who 
 are entirely unhampered by this awkward rela- 
 tion. On the other hand, what is more contempt- 
 ible than the position of many ministers who 
 know, and whose flocks know, that they are 
 hanging on to their positions for their daily 
 bread, and who are as fearful of the frown or 
 disapproval of the local knot of richer men in 
 their congregations who bear the bulk of the 
 parish expenses as though they were lean hounds 
 in a kennel .'' 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 343 
 
 But whatever their faults, the English clergy 
 do a large amount of detail work that no one 
 else is called upon to do in these country towns 
 and villages. Indeed the three marked differ- 
 ences between life in an English and an American 
 country town are : the absence of foreigners, the 
 amount of work done by unpaid officials, and the 
 remarkable dulness, awkwardness, and inarticu- 
 lateness of the lower classes. The mental differ- 
 ence between the university educated gentleman, 
 who is, let us say a County Magistrate, and the 
 ordinary laborer, is greater, far greater than be- 
 tween any two Americans in similar positions in 
 an American town. 
 
 There has been little or no chance for educa- 
 tion. In 1870 the age for compulsory school 
 attendance was fixed at ten; it was raised in 
 1893 to eleven, and in 1899 to twelve. As late as 
 1901, out of every ten thousand children attend- 
 ing school, the number who remained after the 
 age of twelve was only 4,900, and in 1906 it was 
 only 5,900. As a test of what boys acquired and 
 remembered after leaving school, the head of a 
 large labor bureau submitted all boys between 
 sixteen and eighteen to a simple examination. 
 They were asked to do some perfectly simple 
 sums, and to copy in their own handwriting a few 
 lines of print. The result showed that one- 
 
344 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 fourth could write moderately, one-fourth fairly, 
 and one-half "wrote in quite a disgraceful man- 
 ner." As to arithmetic, 10 per cent, answered 
 the two questions, 15 per cent, one of them, and 
 75 per cent, neither of them. Such people must 
 necessarily leave their governing and their guid- 
 ance in all affairs of importance to others. 
 
 One would go far and search long to find a 
 town in Massachusetts without its free public 
 library, and a good one at that. Similar oppor- 
 tunities for reading are almost unknown in the 
 English towns of the type I am describing, and 
 there is little demand for them. Newspapers 
 and magazines are in every house in the Amer- 
 ican town, but only in a comparatively few fami- 
 lies in the English town is there any continued 
 reading of even such ephemeral literature as that. 
 
 There has been no opportunity to take any 
 part in political affairs either local or national. 
 The local tap-room is the laborer's only forum, 
 and the fields he cultivates, or the beasts he tends, 
 limit his experience; and as a result the lowest 
 class of laborers in English country neighbor- 
 hoods, English though they be, are in a condition 
 of intellectual apathy that positively startles the 
 American when he comes in contact with them. 
 In the town in question, with a population 
 slightly over six thousand, there are some nine 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 345 
 
 hundred voters, but there is a surprisingly large 
 number of men of the proper age to vote who are 
 disfranchised by the provisions already men- 
 tioned as to financial qualifications. It may sur- 
 prise American readers to learn that there is a 
 very large male population in England who are 
 still, despite recent reforms, wholly deprived of 
 any participation in government by lack of the 
 necessary financial qualification. In that sense 
 England is very far from being a free country. 
 
 As we have noted elsewhere, the total popula- 
 tion of England and Wales at the last census 
 (1901) was 32,527,843. Of these 15,728,613 
 were males, and of these again 6,697,075 were 
 males of twenty-one years of age or over. At the 
 elections in 1907 the number of registered elec- 
 tors was : Counties, 3,428,721 ; Boroughs, 2,553,- 
 144; Universities, 19,068, or a total of 6,000,933. 
 There were, therefore, 696,142 males twenty-one 
 years of age and over who were not registered 
 voters. We must, however, add largely to this 
 because the census is of 1901, while the electors 
 are of 1907. No doubt some are not registered 
 through neglect, though very few escape from 
 the fine net drawn through every election district 
 by the professional election agents. It is prob- 
 ably, therefore, not far wrong to say that out of a 
 male population twenty-one years of age and 
 
346 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 over numbering 7,000,000, 700,000 were not reg- 
 istered as voters, most of them probably because 
 they were not qualified to vote. In the county 
 town of Shrewsbury, for example, with a popula- 
 tion of 28,395 at the last census, the number of 
 Parliamentary voters was 4,819, divided as 
 follows: Ratepayers, 4,423; Lodgers, 164; Ser- 
 vice, 128; Freemen, 104; with 1,301 women 
 entitled to vote for municipal oflScers. In the 
 last Parliamentary election there actually voted 
 out of the 4,819, 4,350. This does not weigh 
 heavily upon those who are thus deprived of the 
 ballot. They are quite without ambition — this 
 does not refer to factory towns — and of ex- 
 traordinary mental lethargy. Even their speech 
 is of the guttural, indistinct kind, that one usually 
 associates with people partially dumb. Their 
 vocabulary is of the smallest, and their mental 
 pace tortoisian. This appeals to the stranger, the 
 American stranger at least, because he knows 
 no such type among those of his own race at 
 home. Where he meets with stupidity and polit- 
 ical disability, it is among the lower class of 
 foreigners, but here are families who have lived 
 side by side perhaps for centuries, the one in the 
 squire's house, the other in the laborer's cottage, 
 yet the difference between them mentally and 
 politically is as was the difference between the 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 347 
 
 Southern planter and the hands in his cotton 
 fields. There is little fear of exaggerating the 
 opiumonic dulness and apathy among this class, 
 although I appreciate that the Englishman who 
 is accustomed to it may wonder that the stranger 
 finds it so noticeable. It is one of those national 
 traits ihat the fresh eye and ear must be trusted 
 to describe more accurately than may the eye 
 and ear of the native long accustomed to it. 
 The English rustic of this type is uneducated, 
 inarticulate, inaudible and grotesquely awk- 
 ward, both mentally and physically. But he has 
 his small political value for he is always and 
 unalterably for no change! He grumbles, but 
 his grumbling means little, and effects nothing, 
 and plays no more part in the affairs of the world 
 than does an accidental tap on the big drum in 
 the music of an orchestra. 
 
 There is a fierce controversy at the date of this 
 writing (1908) over a new Licensing Bill. One 
 sees on every side placards announcing that 
 "Your beer will cost more!" At the same time 
 the bill is called "confiscatory," and that it will 
 ruin the holders of brewery shares is announced. 
 In addition to this it is claimed that it does not 
 promote temperance. I am no political oracle, 
 but he must be dull indeed who can swallow 
 these three statements together, viz., that beer 
 
348 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 will cost more, that just as much beer will be 
 
 drunk, and that the breweries will be ruined! 
 
 The rustic is evidently counted upon not to 
 
 analyse. 
 
 "All still and silent — ^far and near! 
 Only the ass with motion dull. 
 Upon the pivot of his skull 
 Turns round his long left ear." 
 
 There is absolutely nothing like him in Amer- 
 ica, and he must be seen, and heard, and watched 
 in his native lair to be understood or appreciated. 
 He is useful in doing the heavy work of farm and 
 field, but politically and intellectually he is more 
 like one of his string of stout draught horses than 
 like a modern man of our race. What is steadi- 
 ness in the upper classes droops into sheer 
 stupidity in the lower classes. It is their apathy 
 that accounts to some extent for the entire lack 
 of feverish excitement over temporary troubles 
 which characterizes us Americans. One would 
 suppose that there were no storms, murders, 
 poisoned food, in this country, while in America 
 we revel in these and other tragedies. Who in 
 America, for example, knows of the Derby pork- 
 pie epidemic in 1902, when two hundred and 
 twenty-one persons were attacked and four died ? 
 Who remembers the Manchester arsenical beer 
 episode of 1900, in which over six thousand 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 349 
 
 persons were slowly poisoned? In the last an- 
 nual report of the Local Government Board, 
 which relates to the year lOOG-?^ it is stated that 
 the number of samples analyzed under the Sale of 
 Food and Drugs Acts in 1906 was 90,504, of 
 which 8,466, or 9.3 per cent, were certified to be 
 adulterated. Who in America knows that ? But 
 who in ail the world was not made to hear about 
 Chicago's canned beef! Our rustic Englishman 
 even heard those mischievously exaggerated re- 
 ports from Chicago, and probably thanked God 
 he was not as other men are, as he said grace over 
 his poisoned pie and his arsenical beer. We 
 Americans are accustomed to exaggerated re- 
 tailing of our faults and misdeeds even from 
 public men in high places. Our common-school 
 sophisticated people rather enjoy the excitement. 
 They are not educated up to the point of appre- 
 ciating its immaturity and lack of perspective, 
 but they are wide awake enough to be interested 
 and even stirred by it. In England the mass of 
 people would not be stirred in the least ; while the 
 governing class, trained and disciplined, would 
 ignore such exuberance as bad form. It is quite 
 our own fault, and not a matter for surprise, 
 therefore, if, when we are thus advertised, the 
 country people with whom I am now dealing look 
 upon us in America as being an excitable, rather 
 
350 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 untrustworthy people, holding nothing sacred, 
 and with little personal pride or elevated pa- 
 triotism. 
 
 If there is a difference in the alertness of the 
 people, there is also, it must be admitted, a 
 difference in their leaders, who would, and who 
 do, consider it disgraceful to advertise themselves 
 at the expense of the blunders, or even the sins, of 
 their countrymen. 
 
 Though one may look askance at the political 
 and educational condition of this class of the 
 English populace, one can have little but admira- 
 tion for the thousands of Englishmen who work 
 away year in and year out at the details of local 
 government in England. 
 
 The country Towns, Boroughs, and Districts, 
 and Parishes, and all the machinery of their gov- 
 ernment, are entirely managed by the voluntary 
 labors of those with the wealth, leisure, and ability 
 to do so. They sit as Magistrates, they govern 
 the towns as Councillors and Aldermen, they look 
 after the roads, sanitation, water supply, lighting, 
 schools, poor-houses, and are expected by the 
 powers that be in Parliament to put into, and 
 keep in working order, educational and licensing 
 enactments ; and recently, the whole reorganiza- 
 tion of the territorial forces, or new Army Bill, 
 and the putting into effect of the Small Holdings 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 351 
 
 Act, are to be largely entrusted to them for their 
 successful operation. That they undertake all 
 these duties, that they do them so well, and with 
 so little — almost no — friction, and with so 
 little dissatisfaction to those whom they thus 
 govern, is, I am inclined to think, the most im- 
 pressive feature of English life. 
 
 They are called "The Great Unpaid," and the 
 name is truthful rather than humorous. They 
 act as local commissioners, known as General or 
 District Commissioners of Taxes, and collect the 
 income tax, while quite independent of party and 
 holding their appointments directly from Parlia- 
 ment. All Justices of the Peace are ex-officio 
 commissioners. The land tax is also collected 
 by unpaid commissioners. Of the County Coun- 
 cils having under their control lunatic asylums, 
 bridges, main roads, which are responsible for 
 the county rate, I have written. Chairmen of 
 Quarter Sessions also try all cases not necessarily 
 going before Judges of Assize, and also hear 
 appeals from Justices of the Peace at Sessions. 
 
 More than an hundred hospitals in London and 
 the country are administered by governors and 
 committees, as are the British Museum, the 
 National and Portrait Galleries, and many 
 others. 
 
 Royal commissions and departmental com- 
 
352 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 mitlees do an immense amount of work. Lord 
 Beaconsfield said: "The government of this 
 country is considerably carried on by the aid of 
 Royal Commissions. So great is the increase of 
 public business that it would be probably impos- 
 sible for a Minister to carry on affairs without 
 this assistance." The London County Council 
 demands and, fortunately for the nation, com- 
 mands the most varied talents for the successful 
 administration of the affairs of London. All of 
 these men are unpaid in money and scarcely even 
 receive very wide recognition, let alone applause. 
 The School Board alone in London spends nearly 
 $18,000,000 a year, and have under their man- 
 agement some 750,000 children and 10,000 mas- 
 ters and mistresses. The managers of these 
 schools give their services and in addition look 
 after the schools of cookery, laundry work, man- 
 ual training, gymnastics, swimming schools, 
 home nursing, asylums for the mentally defec- 
 tive, blind schools, truant schools, pupil-teachers' 
 schools and so on. No country in the world 
 receives so much and such valuable service from 
 its leisure classes, or rather its upper classes, 
 since many of these men are already profession- 
 ally engaged, or busy with large private affairs. 
 The large landholdings, the concentration of 
 wealth, the position and privilege accorded to 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 353 
 
 birth and breeding are thus in some sort com- 
 pensated for. The most superficial student 
 realizes that these people would not countenance 
 an idle, or a purely pleasure-loving aristocracy. 
 Herein lies the secret of the permanence of the 
 English classes in these days of rule by the 
 masses. On the whole they pay, and pay with 
 strenuous and honest service, for what they 
 receive. 
 
 The chapter on "Who are the English.?" out- 
 lined the historical forces, or genealogy, of this 
 system of unpaid self-government. If the owner- 
 ship of the land in a few hands, and the aggrega- 
 tion of wealth in a few hands are evils, this 
 wonderful system of efficient unpaid local govern- 
 ment goes some way to palliate them. The 
 saving of expense to the taxpayer must be enor- 
 mous, and it may well be set down as unquestion- 
 ably true that the work is far better done than 
 it could be by a paid staff of political servants. 
 Administration, whether at home or abroad, is 
 apparently the birthright of the well-trained 
 Englishman. When one sees at close quarters 
 how admirably he keeps his own house in order, 
 one is the less surprised at his hitherto unpara- 
 lelled success as a colonizer and administrator 
 in other countries. 
 
 The application of law without common-sense 
 
354 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 results in friction and chicanery unending ; while 
 common-sense without law becomes mere pater- 
 nalism tempered by tyranny. The happy me- 
 dium is the application of the law by common 
 sense, and nowhere may this be seen to better 
 advantage than here. Imagine the British Em- 
 pire administered for a year by Frenchmen! If 
 it were not for the horror of what would follow to 
 innocent people, nothing could be more gro- 
 tesquely ludicrous. The results to the humorist 
 would be even more illuminating than should the 
 English undertake to do the dressmaking and 
 millinery work of the French. I venture to say 
 that nothing in the whole realm of sestheticism 
 could be more awful than that. 
 
 Even as complicated a measure as the new 
 Small Holdings Act, which, roughly described, is 
 a bill to enable persons without land in England 
 and Wales to become possessed of a certain num- 
 ber of acres by proper payments, the land of 
 course to be leased or purchased outright from 
 the larger landowners, has been turned over to 
 the County Councillors to work out. When one 
 realizes the jealousies, and the jobbery, that such 
 a taking and giving of property might entail, one 
 must needs envy in a measure a nation where 
 there is a competent body of unpaid workers 
 willing to undertake so distasteful and so techni- 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 355 
 
 cally difficult a task. This very day there appears 
 in the Morning Post the following advertisement : 
 
 EMPIRE MOVEMENT 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen of independent means are invited to 
 offer their services gratis for the promotion of the "Empire 
 Movement" at home and throughout the Empire. No expenses 
 paid. Formation of local permanent Committees, distribution 
 of literature, etc. — Address : Earl of Meath, 83, Lancaster Gate, 
 London, W. 
 
 The italics are the letter writer's. 
 
 To what extent this appeal in a morning paper 
 will be answered I have of course no means of 
 knowing, but it is a pertinent and timely proof 
 of what has been said in regard to the faith of the 
 Britisher in the existence and willingness of the 
 unpaid and unprofessional worker to take addi- 
 tional burdens upon his shoulders. At any rate 
 it will probably result in correspondence for the 
 noble lord that very few men would care to un- 
 dertake gratuitously. They do not confine their 
 interest and their activities to official matters of 
 administration. In such semi-public matters 
 as hospitals, agricultural and flower shows, cricket, 
 and rowing, and football, and provident clubs, 
 golf, and here and there polo clubs, they not only 
 support and encourage, but they participate. 
 Their interests of this kind are even greater and 
 
356 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 more varied than in the public work which is 
 done under the law. It is this genuine and 
 wholesome good-fellowship between all classes 
 which tempers the strict social demarcations. 
 There are classes to be sure, but the classes all 
 belong, and take pride in making it evident that 
 they do belong, to one all-powerful class, which 
 is England. 
 
 The more prominent one is by birth, wealth or 
 position, the more it is looked upon as incumbent 
 upon such an one to take an active part in local 
 and national affairs. The masses have grown to 
 feel that they can depend upon the classes to 
 lead, and to lead courageously and wisely. 
 Though England has become perhaps more 
 democratic in certain ways, it is still very evident 
 that the Englishman likes a gentleman to lead 
 him. I am told that in the army this is made un- 
 mistakably evident. It is not mere snobbery, 
 though there may be a touch of it, but it is the 
 centuries old instinct of the English to have faith 
 in noblesse oblige as a real factor in life. 
 
 There died only lately a shy, awkward Eng- 
 lishman, of great name and great estates, to 
 whom it was a kind of torture to speak in public, 
 to whom it meant hours of, drudgery to master 
 problems of State. He became the most trusted 
 of English statesmen. When people spoke of 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 357 
 
 "The Duke," it meant the Duke of Devonshire. 
 He was never in the least shifty, or ingratiating, 
 or amenable to even the lofty bribes of oflSce or 
 ambition. He held a brief for England, and 
 made no fuss about it. He was typical of the 
 class, which, numbering its thousands far less 
 conspicuous than he, do the work of England 
 because they consider it a duty. When England 
 arrives at her Pass at Thermopylse, this large 
 class will have to be reckoned with, and I venture 
 to prophecy that there will not be even one left 
 to tell the news, if things go against them. 
 
 This sense of duty to England, when exercised 
 by the English abroad, takes on an air of aggres- 
 siveness and superciliousness which have often 
 been noted by foreigners. As a matter of fact they 
 are unimaginative administrators, rather than 
 supercilious. They look upon themselves as 
 sentinels of a kind of Anglican Almighty whether 
 at home or abroad, and the stiffness of their de- 
 portment should be forgiven them, rather than 
 held up against them. A man who has India at 
 arm's length and Ireland squealing at his feet, 
 must needs be robust and matter of fact, rather 
 than nervous and an idealist, if he is to sleep 
 nights. As an example of devotion to duty I cite 
 the case of an English gentleman of comfortable 
 income who, finding when the South African war 
 
358 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 broke out that he had no military experience, en- 
 listed and went out as a farrier or blacksmith. 
 He had learnt horseshoeing as an amusement as 
 a youth, and was, and is, an amateur in gold and 
 silver and iron work. He shod horses until 
 his value was recognized for other duties, and he 
 came home a major, having been twice wounded. 
 What can Ireland, or Germany, or other enemies 
 do against a nation whose gentlemen are made 
 of such stuff as that! 
 
 Of the smaller domestic social life in the town 
 itself the variations are so many that it would 
 be quite impossible to make an inclusive category 
 without weariness to both writer and reader. 
 There are musical, and debating, and mutual 
 improvement societies, and these are becoming 
 more and more common, and they flourish or not 
 according to the talent available. 
 
 One marked difference between the English 
 and the American town is the part played by the 
 local churches in the American towns. They 
 are often the centre of the amusements of the 
 town. Around them grow the literary and 
 musical and even the dramatic clubs. Church 
 "sociables," and picnics, and suppers, are often 
 part of the regular programme of church work. 
 According as the local pastor is energetic and of 
 yaried talents, social and literary, these activities 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 359 
 
 flourish. In England this is not the custom. 
 The people in the town itself lunch and dine to- 
 gether, and on a much smaller scale keep the 
 social ball rolling along much the same lines as 
 their wealthier neighbors of greater social posi- 
 tion. I well remember my astonishment at the 
 first dinner given to some ten or a dozen neigh- 
 bors who had been civil to us, to find in the hall 
 where hats, coats, and wraps had been left, va- 
 rious rolls of music of different sizes and descrip- 
 tions. I hastily informed the hostess of this 
 discovery. Our duty-loving English guests had 
 come prepared to do their share towards the gen- 
 eral entertainment after dinner. This was before 
 the days of bridge playing, and what happens 
 now I know not. But at that time each one came 
 prepared to sing or play for the edification of the 
 others. Most amateur music in England, as 
 elsewhere, my experience teaches, is not an aid to 
 digestion; and to the ultra-sensitive it may even 
 be a test of patience; but the English are iuty- 
 doing rather than artistic, and an amiable host 
 forgets of course certain painful laryngeal exer- 
 cises in his appreciation of the unselfish desire 
 of a guest to do his, or her, share toward the 
 general entertainment. 
 
 The English dinner party, in the provincial 
 towns and cities at any rate, is a heavy, prolonged 
 
360 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and rather lugubrious affair. One feels some- 
 times as though it would be neither surprising nor 
 inappropriate should one suddenly hear a voice 
 saying : '* Brethren, let us pray ! " In England, as 
 elsewhere, little people give bad big dinners, 
 and big people give nice little dinners. 
 
 It was considered proper in Northbridge to 
 give rather pretentious dinners of many courses, 
 with servants added to the staff for the evening. 
 I have seen on more than one occasion the groom, 
 in livery of belt, breeches, and boots, assisting at 
 the service of the dinner. It must be added, 
 however, that the dinners were given apparently 
 as a social duty, and as a return for similar 
 courtesies received during the year, rather than 
 as an attempt at display. It adds something of 
 both ludicrousness and lugubriousness to a din- 
 ner to hear the assistant of the local undertaker, 
 who is serving as a waiter for the evening, whis- 
 per to your host, who has ordered your glass 
 refilled with champagne : ' ' There ain't no more. 
 Sir!" Even if one be still thirsty, the incident is 
 forgotten, however, in the knowledge that your 
 host is doing his best in your honor. 
 
 There is little exuberance or elasticity in pro- 
 vincial hospitality, though it is as kindly and 
 generous as anywhere in the world. They labor 
 under the disadvantage of certain racial char- 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 361 
 
 acteristics, which, while it makes administrators 
 of the finest quahty, does not produce enter- 
 tainers. I can imagine that the Duke of Devon- 
 shire himself was probably not a scintillating 
 host, and no doubt England thanks God that he 
 was not, and with reason. 
 
 In thjB American town that I have in mind as a 
 contrast, there was no attempt, even by people of 
 similar means and position, to live up to any such 
 social standard as that of dinner-giving on any 
 scale whatever. 
 
 Strange as it seems, having in mind the small- 
 ness geographically of England and the ease with 
 which one may go from place to place, the Eng- 
 lish town is more an entity and less dependent 
 upon neighboring large towns and cities than is 
 the case in America. The people in Northbridge 
 keep within their own borders more, and depend 
 more upon themselves for such amusements, rec- 
 reations and social enjoyments as they have, than 
 would hold true of an American town. Here, as 
 elsewhere, they cultivate the faculty of being 
 sufficient unto themselves, and display that re- 
 sourcefulness in small matters which distin- 
 guishes them in large affairs. 
 
 Here again, too, their climate influences their 
 way of living. I doubt if there was one man in a 
 hundred in Northbridge under seventy-five and 
 
362 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 not a pauper who was not an active participant 
 in some form of sport — hunting, shooting, cricket, 
 tennis, golf, rowing — and many in addition inter- 
 esting themselves in the local militia, volunteers, 
 or yeomanry. Some part of every day in the year 
 they can be, and are, out of doors. While in 
 Bear's Cove more time is given to, and more inter- 
 est taken in, novel or reading clubs; in North- 
 bridge, out-door sport claims more time and 
 keener interest. While from the economic point 
 of view it may be regretted that the land is so 
 unequally distributed, from the point of view of 
 the inhabitants of a country town, it is a most 
 agreeable and convenient arrangement. The 
 land is all cultivated, and the fields, and woods, 
 and country lanes are in and of themselves a vast 
 park, open to all so long as there is no disturbance 
 of the game and the cattle. And what a park it 
 is ! This soft, dreamy, drowsy, English country- 
 side, in the summer months at least, is the fairest 
 setting in the world for a holiday, and goes far to 
 account for the English love of out-door life and 
 for many of the differences between an American 
 and an English country town. 
 
 Perhaps the main, the fundamental, difference 
 between the two is after all that the English 
 being less imaginative, and with fewer opportu- 
 nities, and hence with less incentive to change their 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 363 
 
 social or financial status, seem to the American 
 to be more contented, more peaceable, and calm 
 — the unsympathetic American might phrase it 
 as duller, less enterprising. These country town 
 people are seemingly striving to live as did their 
 fathers and grandfathers; in America the rest- 
 lessness is the result of the strife on the part of 
 most people to have a portion of the wealth, the 
 good fortune, the opportunities, of their grand- 
 children. The Englishman looks back for his 
 standard, and makes tradition and precedent 
 serve as guide; the American looks forward, 
 scans eagerly the far horizon of the future, rebels 
 against old customs, against the ways of the 
 grandfathers, scoffs at caution, and lives as 
 much as he can in the future. The Englishman 
 lives upon his income knowing how hard it is to 
 increase his capital; the American all too often 
 lives upon his capital and looks upon the oppor- 
 tunity to participate in the enormous increase of 
 natural wealth of his country as a more or less 
 assured income. The Englishman prosaically 
 tries to live upon what he has; the American 
 lives upon what he thinks he deserves, upon what 
 he expects. One can readily see how this 
 fashions differently the setting of life. The one 
 results in calm, in contentment, or, at any rate, a 
 forced contentment which imitates the reality; 
 
364 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 the other results in an attitude of expectancy, 
 of constant striving and restless watchfulness. 
 The American even in a country town is sur- 
 rounded on all sides by the evidences of what 
 twenty-five years of Future have done; the 
 Englishman is surrounded, on the contrary, on 
 all sides by what hundreds of years of Past have 
 done. The American naturally enough leans 
 forward; the Englishman leans back. We all 
 know which is the more alert position of the two, 
 and which is the more restful. The one is 
 trying to keep what he has ; the other is trying to 
 wring what he can from the future. The one 
 plays with what he has; the other gambles for 
 what he wants. The one tries to make himself 
 comfortable in last year's nest; the other is look- 
 ing for the best place to build himself another 
 nest, better and bigger than the old one. 
 
 The country town in England and in America 
 differ accordingly. In the one they are making 
 the best of what they have inherited ; in the other 
 they are mainly solicitous about what is to come. 
 The house of the Englishman is being mellowed 
 and smoothed down. More vines and roses 
 grown on it every year. The house of the 
 American is in a constant state of repair, of being 
 added to, of being improved. Both to the eye 
 and to all the other senses the one spells repose, 
 
AN ENGLISH COUNTRY TOWN 365 
 
 quiet; the other advertises activity and restless- 
 ness. Each prefers his own. Fortunately it is 
 no business of mine to decide between them. 
 If I have come anywhere near accuracy in noting 
 the differences, I have satisfied my own purposes. 
 
IX 
 
 SOCIETY 
 
 IT is with some misgivings that I put the word 
 "Society" as the heading for a chapter. 
 The word has been so misused, and is so 
 often supposed to apply only to that small knot of 
 people who are the mere dregs of opulent idle- 
 ness that one is inclined to apologize for its 
 serious use. It is not for me to place the blame 
 in any one quarter, upon the news and sensation- 
 hungry press, upon the notoriety-loving wives, or 
 upon the advertising husbands, but the trouble 
 lies somewhere there. That the very word 
 "Society" should call up visions of monkeys, 
 madcaps, and mountebanks, reckless expenditure, 
 gilded display — a company of men and women, 
 in short, engaged in the fatuous activity of trying 
 to mould pleasure out of idleness, a task as hope- 
 less as to build an enduring monument out of 
 mush — shows at once how false must be the 
 standards which have lent this meaning to the 
 word. 
 
 366 
 
SOCIETY 367 
 
 There is, none the less, and despite these loose 
 vagaries of meaning, such a thing as Society in 
 every capital and in every country, difficult as it 
 is to define. It bears something of the resem- 
 blance to the rest of the community that the sunny 
 side of a peach, upon which a monogram or the 
 head of the King has been outlined by the sun, 
 does to the rest of the peach. It has had more 
 sun, more care and more money spent upon it. 
 It implies first of all wealth, and after that certain 
 subtle laws of cohesion which make this company 
 of men and women known as Society, the ac- 
 knowledged, significant, and socially powerful 
 association of their day and generation. Such a 
 company existed at Versailles, still exists in 
 Vienna, is easily distinguishable in London, and 
 in a more shadowy form in America. 
 
 Where there is a king and a court this com- 
 pany finds its centre there, and one knows where 
 to go to look for it. Where there are none, the 
 centre is shifting and evasive, and the boundaries 
 indeterminate. 
 
 In other chapters it may be seen that the 
 English do not take readily to either the social or 
 political dictatorship of a king, nor have they 
 ever been courtiers. Until within a compara- 
 tively few years the wealth of England has been 
 the wealth of landholders and landlords. The 
 
368 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 members of this class have represented the nation 
 politically and socially, both at home and abroad. 
 From them have been drawn the members of 
 Society. It is often said that anybody with 
 money may become a member of Society in Eng- 
 land, and this is with many limitations true, but 
 it is not, as many people think, new. England 
 has always been willing, not to say eager, to dis- 
 tinguish worth and wealth. James the First, 
 needing money, created two hundred baronets at 
 one thousand pounds apiece at Burleigh's sug- 
 gestion. Charles the First insisted upon creating 
 knights, whether the knighted liked it or not, in 
 order to collect the fees. 
 
 The landowning or territorial aristocracy has 
 been recruited again and again from the success- 
 ful in other walks in life, either for good, bad, or 
 indifferent reasons. In the last fifty years the 
 wealth of the landowners has decreased enor- 
 mously, and the wealth of the manufacturer, the 
 banker, the builder, and those engaged in com- 
 merce of whatever description, has increased even 
 more noticeably. As a result of this more people 
 have been taken into this body in the last few 
 years, but this has always been the custom in 
 England. It marks no change, only a difference 
 in quantity. It is, and always has been in Eng- 
 land, from this class that Society emerges. It is 
 
SOCIETY 369 
 
 the only class here from which any distinguished 
 company could come. 
 
 As they have been also the governing class and 
 as London is the seat of government, London has 
 been the setting for all social activities of any 
 importance. There is social life of course in 
 Edinburgh, and in Birmingham, and in Dublin, 
 and in Leicester, but Society meets in London. 
 Society not only comes to London, but must come 
 to London. There are no rivals, and there is 
 nothing to call Society anywhere else. The body 
 from which Society is drawn and the playground 
 or meeting place in the season are fixed. This 
 accounts in no small measure for the lack of ad- 
 vertising and notoriety about social matters here. 
 In the season there is so much going on, so many 
 political, social, and other affairs, that it is 
 physically impossible for the newspapers to dis- 
 tinguish them all with head -lines and paragraphs, 
 or to make sensations of them even were that the 
 custom. Any one of a dozen functions, all in 
 one day or night in London, would be meat and 
 drink to the sensational press for columns of 
 matter and days of comment in America. 
 When it happens that a horse show, a church 
 congress, a county cricket match, or a school or 
 university cricket match, inter-regimental polo 
 match, a regatta on the Thames, half a dozen 
 
S70 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 balls, a political hostess's reception, an inter- 
 national exhibition, the Royal Academy picture 
 exhibition, are all going at about the same time, 
 the journalist is swamped by his material, and 
 people and parties are left inconspicuously and 
 happily alone by the very impossibility of sensa- 
 tionalizing everything. Where in New York or 
 Washington there is one wedding, or one ball, 
 or one football match, or one big dinner, London 
 provides a half dozen of each day after day, and 
 even the housemaid would be bored by an at- 
 tempt so colossal to play upon her curiosity, her 
 taste for high life, or her love of exciting gossip. 
 If every fellow in the play is a "noble Mar- 
 quess" or a "belted Earl" one becomes sur- 
 feited, no matter how voracious the appetite. 
 London for three months in the year absorbs the 
 entertainers and entertainments of all England, 
 and each and all are more or less lost in the maze 
 of social doings. Court functions are officially 
 noticed, but without comment; lists of names 
 are given, and those who care to do so permit 
 their gowns to be described. Any one who 
 wishes may, on payment of a guinea, chronicle 
 his arrival, departure, or whereabouts in the staid 
 columns of the Morning Post; and a few people 
 through their secretaries, or other paid agents, 
 contrive to keep themselves more or less bepara- 
 
SOCIETY 371 
 
 graphed from time to time. But no body of 
 people, great or small, find it to their credit, or to 
 their advantage, to permit a minute advertise- 
 ment of themselves along theatrical lines. Lon- 
 don is so much bigger than anybody or anything 
 in London, that the very bulk of the place keeps 
 all mote or less inconspicuous. No man or 
 woman can be interested or active along so many 
 social, political, and athletic lines, and as a conse- 
 quence each is subdued to the color of his or her 
 own employment. There is no one centre for 
 the newspaper limelight to play upon, and its 
 distribution over such an enormous stage leaves 
 all the actors in a less glaring light. 
 
 Less easily explained, but none the less to be 
 noted, is that law by which Society, as well as 
 art, and literature, and politics, follows the 
 nation's centre of gravity. In the days of 
 Elizabeth, for example, the centre of gravity was 
 among the middle classes, and Drake and 
 Raleigh were great men. After the Restoration 
 the centre of gravity moved toward the aristoc- 
 racy, and one has only to glance through Bishop 
 Burnet's history of the time, by the way, to dis- 
 cover for one's self how vastly improved are the 
 manners and morals of men and women since 
 those days of the foul and the filthy in Society and 
 the Court. There are few even professedly 
 
372 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 pornographic writings containing such a list of 
 bestial details and scandals as those enumerated, 
 apparently with some gusto, in the first edition of 
 this ecclesiastical worthy's History. 
 
 At about the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the centre of gravity, both social and polit- 
 ical, became fixed in the great Whig families who 
 had carried through the Revolution. The So- 
 ciety of London drawing-rooms then, and there- 
 after, maintained a vigorous influence both in 
 politics and in literature. It is from these great 
 territorial families, whether Whigs or Tories, that 
 Society ever since has derived its sustenance, its 
 traditions, and its power. 
 
 Such, roughly, is the pedigree and the back- 
 ground, as London is the meeting place, of Eng- 
 lish Society for three months in the year. It 
 would be missing a chief characteristic of Eng- 
 lish social life not to bear in mind just here, 
 that it is only for these two, or at most three, 
 months that Society meets in London. The 
 Englishman may have a house in London, but 
 his home is alv/ays in the country. The best 
 of them still love the land. It is at the country- 
 houses, where for the greater part of the year 
 the English are at home that one sees English 
 Society in its natural and graceful setting. Even 
 the clothes of the women are becoming, and 
 
SOCIETY sra 
 
 the manners of both men and women appro- 
 priate and happy in these surroundings they 
 love best of all. In their own homes in the 
 country, doing the things they genuinely love to 
 do, shooting, riding, fishing, looking after their 
 estates, entertaining generously, surrounded only 
 by those agreeable to them, with nothing to 
 make them self-conscious ; here at last the Eng- 
 lishman thaws, and becomes almost lovable! 
 He has been criticized, this Englishman, in these 
 pages, never with intentional unfairness, but in 
 this setting of his own home in the country, 
 there is not a word, except in praise — and I 
 may add on my own behalf — in affection and 
 admiration to be said. If you want him at his 
 best, go and stay with him in his home in the 
 country! There and then he is the best fellow 
 imaginable, and you leave him and his home 
 with respect, with affection, and with admiration. 
 A third, and distinguishing feature, is that So- 
 ciety is dominated by masculine not by feminine 
 influence. 
 
 The London season is from May till the grouse 
 shooting begins in August. Why ? asks every 
 stranger who hits upon a dry and hot July in 
 London. The reason is a very simple one: 
 Men are shooting up to Christmas time, and then 
 hunting after that. They will not live in London 
 
374 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 when sport is calling them to the country. In 
 summer there is no shooting and no hunting, but 
 there are Parliament, polo, and cricket in London. 
 Society meekly adapts itself to the man's duties 
 and diversions. 
 
 At the risk of vain repetition I may not empha- 
 size too often this preeminence of the man in 
 England. We have noted it in other places, but 
 it comes to the fore again even here. Society is 
 so patently, even impertinently, for the women in 
 America, that to the American it is with some awe 
 that he sees even social matters dominated by 
 and adjusted to, the convenience and even to the 
 whims of the men here. One may say humbly, 
 and with apologies to his countrywomen, that 
 this masculine dominance is not altogether a 
 failure. It is perhaps old-fashioned, and due 
 also to the refined feminine influences of one's 
 past and present surroundings, but it never seems 
 quite as though the social adjustment of things 
 is right when woman becomes conspicuous, and 
 certainly not right oi wise when she becomes the 
 target for the camera and the paragraph. It 
 is my humble belief that a woman cannot become 
 "well known" without becoming ipso facto too 
 well known. 
 
 It seems that Dame Nature by an iron law 
 ordained that the male bird should wear the 
 
SOCIETY 375 
 
 brave and conspicuous plumage. Apparently 
 when it is attempted to upset this world-old law 
 of precedence, and the female is clothed in the 
 plumage and perquisites of the male, she fails. 
 She all too often becomes a cocotte in France, a 
 divorcee in America. It somehow takes away 
 from the fairest bloom of womanhood when she 
 struts the stage of the world, when, spedatum 
 veniunU veniunt spectentur ut ipsce. It is cer- 
 tainly not for their health, it may be doubted if it 
 be for their happiness, to shift the burden of even 
 social preeminence to the shoulders of women. 
 
 It has come about in America by easy and 
 natural stages. We have amassed in a few years 
 great wealth with no traditions behind it and no 
 weight of responsibility upon it to keep it steady. 
 It is too new to be left to take care of itself, and 
 the energies of the men are devoted to keeping, 
 controlling and adding to it. Very few of the 
 men who have it, most of their fathers, and 
 nearly all of their grandfathers, have, and had, 
 no other resources. That is the only game they 
 knew or know. But it must be spent. It cannot 
 be said of us by our worst enemy that we Amer- 
 icans are misers. Palaces, and steam yachts, 
 and motor cars, and equipages, clothes and 
 pocket money are provided for, or should one be 
 more accurate in saying, piled upon, the women 
 
376 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of these opulent ones. Many of the women in 
 consequence are forced into being idle spend- 
 thrifts. 
 
 There is no such outlet for voluntary work in 
 America as in England. We have written in 
 another chapter of the amount of unpaid polit- 
 ical, charitable, educational, and other work done 
 here by the men of the leisure classes. Many of 
 these opportunities are also open to, and are taken 
 advantage of, by the women. The wife and 
 daughters of a rich man in England, with the 
 church, the schools, the poor in the neighborhood 
 of his estate, may find their hands full of work. 
 It is not resented here, it is expected. In Amer- 
 ica, the schools, at any rate, are governed by the 
 State, and idle ladies who should without tradi- 
 tion and precedent behind them invade the pre- 
 cincts of the State-paid schoolmaster or school- 
 mistress would receive but a scant welcome. 
 An idle man, whose thoughts and actions are 
 continually driven back in and upon himself, is 
 a pitiable object, and generally a physical and 
 mental invalid before he is fifty. What of a 
 woman under such circumstances.? Is it to be 
 wondered at that she shirks what might be her 
 only salvation — motherhood, and becomes with 
 Satanic selfishness a peevish follower of her own 
 whims ? 
 
SOCIETY 377 
 
 The English woman knows that tradition, the 
 law, and Society, demand of her that she shall 
 make a home for a man; the American woman 
 has been led astray by force of circumstances into 
 thinking that her first duty is to make a place for 
 herself. Far be it from one who owes much, if 
 not all, to an American mother and an American 
 wife, to offer these conclusions as an attack. They 
 are meant as an explanation of the unfortunate 
 doings and wasted lives of only a small, very 
 small, knot of women in America, but a company 
 so highly-colored, so vociferous, and so adver- 
 tised that they stamp themselves upon the super- 
 ficial foreigner as being typical, when as a matter 
 of fact they are merely hysterical. 
 
 Wherever in the history of the world woman 
 has assumed, or been accorded, this unfortunate 
 and artificial prominence, it has meant decay. 
 Aspasia was the tolling of the bell as manhood 
 died in Greece ; harlotry in France has now a 
 recognized place, with privileges unknown, and 
 certainly unrecognized, amongst the fighting 
 nations of the world; and let us be quite frank 
 and admit what all the world thinks, that men 
 who cannot and will not' fight are not men 
 at all. Where the aesthetic is more cherished 
 than the athletic, women may thrive but men 
 decay. 
 
378 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 In America this deprivation of woman's true 
 function of the home keeper has been rudely 
 and suddenly jarred and thrust on one side, but 
 not, I believe, permanently, by the idleness which 
 often comes with unexpected and untraditioned 
 wealth. 
 
 "It is not death, but life that slays: 
 The night less mountainously lies 
 Upon our lips, than foolish days' 
 Importunate futilities." 
 
 It may be said that it is not entirely the fault of 
 the women, or of the men, that this situation 
 exists, and let me repeat that it applies only to a 
 very small proportion of men and women in 
 America, but we happen to be dealing for the 
 moment with that small number. The Amer- 
 ican is too much occupied with affairs to have 
 time to spare for much social recreation ; nor has 
 he cultivated that facility in sympathy, in ex- 
 pression, and in manner, which makes the arti- 
 ficiality of Society a comfortable relaxation for 
 him. Our women are almost obliged to surround 
 themselves, and to use, for social purposes, either 
 very young or inferior men. This is not good 
 for women. Nothing a woman tires of so soon 
 in a man as her own virtues and vices; nothing 
 she so soon learns to despise in a man as her own 
 
SOCIETY 379 
 
 methods of conquest. One may say, without 
 much fear of intelligent contradiction, from 
 either my countrymen or my countrywomen, that 
 the male drawing-room notabilities in America 
 are not of the type that one would care to increase, 
 or to exhibit to the world, as typical of American 
 manhood. The men who have made America 
 great at home, and respected abroad, would, alas, 
 find little to interest them at our most widely 
 advertised social functions. 
 
 To a very large extent this is not true of English 
 Society. The ablest and the most notable men 
 from all walks of political, financial, literary, ar- 
 tistic, and adventurous activity, find their way, at 
 least from time to time, to English drawing-rooms 
 and dinner tables. They go not only because 
 they meet the fairest and most attractive women 
 there, but because they meet men there of their 
 own calibre. The women provide the soft stuff 
 in which delicate things may be packed together 
 without breakage, they serve as agreeable and 
 sophisticated buffers when people of different 
 tastes, pursuits, and aptitudes come together. 
 The ideal host is a woman not a man, whose 
 sympathy and trained perceptions put conflicting 
 and uneasy talents together, and make them for- 
 get their antagonisms. No man can do this as 
 can a woman, and no woman learns the art who 
 
380 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 only deals with women or with inferior men. 
 Men add a difficulty to social life, which improves 
 it when it is overcome. 
 
 Perhaps the most outstanding feature of social 
 as of other phases of life in England to an Amer- 
 ican is the fact that it is the man's code of ethics 
 which obtains and not the woman's. A woman 
 cannot claim a divorce on the ground of adultery 
 alone. The offence must be accompanied by 
 cruelty, or be committed so openly and fre- 
 quently as to mean cruelty, before it becomes 
 cause for separation or divorce. Divorce indeed 
 is only for the rich, for those who can afford a 
 prolonged and expensive legal battle. It is not 
 for discussion here whether this is good or bad, 
 but one may say as an American that the flings at 
 American methods in such matters are hardly 
 warranted. 
 
 "In Divorce Court procedure there is now 
 one law for the rich and another for the poor." 
 From Sir J. Gorell Barnes's speech to Liver- 
 pool law students, February 5. 
 
 "It is the serious reproach of our existing 
 divorce laws that the relief they grant is practi- 
 cally out of the reach of the working classes 
 in this country, by reason of expense and the 
 absence of local courts empowered to grant it." 
 From the judgment of Lord Justice Fletcher 
 
SOCIETY 381 
 
 Moulton in the case of Harriman v. Harriman, 
 February 9. 
 
 Under the Summary Jurisdiction (Married 
 Women) Act of 1895 there were granted up to the 
 end of 1906, 72,537 separation orders. Seven 
 thousand separations a year amongst this small 
 population, or one to about every 540 of the 
 population, is not a showing that would tempt 
 any but the ignorant or the unthinking to hold up 
 hands in pharisaic horror where other nations are 
 concerned. 
 
 The Englishman looks at the whole matter, 
 not from a logical or a highly ethical point of 
 view, but from his usual makeshift common- 
 sense point of view. He holds that a lapse from 
 fidelity in a man does not destroy his usefulness, 
 neither is it irretrievable; in a woman it may on 
 the contrary interfere irretrievably with the rights 
 of all others he holds most dear, the rights of 
 succession and property. Failure to keep his 
 word or his contract, whether in gambling or 
 commerce, he refuses to forgive and punishes 
 swiftly and surely both socially and legally, but 
 infidelity he looks upon as unfortunate but 
 not criminal. There have been many instances 
 of politicians and statesmen notoriously un- 
 chaste, whose status in the service of the State 
 and whose usefulness have not been in the least 
 
382 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 interfered with by that fact. One recalls the 
 episode of poor King George, whose wife on her 
 deathbed said to him: "You will marry again." 
 "Oh, no," whimpered the monarch, "J'aurai 
 des maitresses!" "Mais ca n'empeche pas," 
 replied the Queen. "Depend upon it," said a 
 French lady of the old regime, "God Almighty 
 thinks twice before he condemns persons of 
 quality!" One is led to suspect that the great 
 English church dignitaries, and other English 
 moralists, have something of the same feeling. 
 I find it hard to believe that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury would openly rebuke the reigning 
 sovereign, or the heir to the throne, even though 
 he were notoriously unfaithful. It must be with 
 some sense of discomfiture, if not of shame, that 
 the clergy, paid as they are by the State, rebuke 
 gambling and unchastity amongst the lower 
 orders, but never whisper disapproval of these 
 vices among the great. Even the great Church- 
 men are apparently believers in the doctrine of 
 compromise. They preach that cautious Chris- 
 tianity which holds up an ideal for all, but ap- 
 plies it as a rule only for some, and those the least 
 conspicuous and the most amenable. These par- 
 sons are on the side of the angels doubtless, but 
 they seem very loath to do the devil any harm, 
 when he appears in the garb and with the man- 
 
SOCIETY 383 
 
 ners of a gentleman. Logic, as we have seen, is 
 not applied to life. They have discovered that it 
 is not workable. They hold that the Decalogue, 
 for example, is in ten different parts, and though 
 one part be broken the rest may still be intact. 
 Morals are not a jug, which if it have one hole 
 is useless to carry water, but rather a platter, 
 which though it be chipped and scratched may 
 still serve to pass the loaf. They recognize that 
 the bread of life itself is served on, and eaten 
 from, some very disfigured platters, and that the 
 world would starve even spiritually and morally 
 if it were required that all platters should be 
 without spot or nick. 
 
 So long as such matters do not become the 
 subject of public scandal, so long as a man is not 
 dragged through the courts, little attention is 
 paid to that phase of his private life. It is known 
 to everybody ; it is mentioned in public by nobody. 
 It is not considered prejudicial to a man's useful- 
 ness, and were a political opponent to use such 
 weapons against a man he himself in all proba- 
 bility would be the sufferer. 
 
 I need hardly call attention to the abysmal 
 difference in this particular between the mascu- 
 line code which applies in England and the femi- 
 nine code which applies in America. One of 
 the ablest and most useful chief magistrates we 
 
384 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 have had in America since Lincoln was nearly 
 defeated when he was first a candidate for the 
 Presidency by noxious stories about his private 
 morals, and at that time he was a bachelor. His 
 life and services proved beyond peradventure 
 how foolish and contemptible was the application 
 of such standards of judgment. The American 
 politician of the small fry order has, however, 
 played the cards of domesticity and a certain 
 namby-pamby sentimentalism to the utmost limit 
 of fancifulness. Behind the noise and confusion 
 made about the seventh commandment the poli- 
 tician and political hanger-on have accomplished 
 the most variegated and daring assaults upon the 
 eighth commandment known to political history. 
 The "Thou shalt not" in the seventh is so vocif- 
 erous that it is scarcely an audible whisper to the 
 political conscience when it is pronounced in the 
 eighth. 
 
 Society, in the large sense and in the more 
 restricted meaning of the word, is learning that 
 a much advertised domestic felicity may be the 
 home and hiding place of a set of burglar's tools. 
 A man ought, of course, to be both clean in his 
 private life and honest in his public life, but it is a 
 pity to be fooled into such over-emphasis of the 
 one that the other is forgotten. A chaste thief 
 is no better than a rake. There are probably 
 
SOCIETY 385 
 
 more of the former, and fewer of the latter, in 
 American than in English social and political life. 
 
 It is not our business here, or the purpose of 
 these pages, to enter upon an ethical discussion, 
 or to approve or to disapprove of either the Eng- 
 lish or the American code of morals, but merely 
 to note the application and the differences, and 
 if possible to offer some explanation of the whys 
 and wherefores. 
 
 It should be kept in mind that Society in Eng- 
 land has a status of its own, is outlined in the 
 Constitution itself, is prayed for by the priests of 
 the National Church each Sunday, and that, 
 therefore, a large number of persons are in 
 Society by the law of the land and may not lightly 
 be set aside even on account of moral delin- 
 quencies. 
 
 It is, I believe, a popular notion that rules of 
 precedence are trivial regulations of temporary 
 officials or chamberlains framed somewhat to 
 suit their fancy. On the contrary, the law of 
 precedence in England is as good a law as any 
 other in Westminster Hall, and is established by 
 Act of Parliament. The "Act for Placing the 
 Lords" was passed by Parliament in the reign of 
 Henry the Eighth, and even as early as 1399 there 
 was a regulation entitled "The Order of all 
 Estates and Gentry of England.'* 
 
386 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The English scale of precedence is curiously 
 ungallant in excluding the ladies. The wife of 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury or of York or of 
 a bishop has no place, possibly due to the fact 
 that rules of precedence date from a time when 
 Churchmen did not marry. It seems more than 
 Britishly illogical and irrational in more ways 
 than one that the wife of a saint should not 
 receive her compensating reward in this world! 
 But the same holds good of the wives of the Prime 
 Minister, Lord Chancellor, the Speaker, Secre- 
 tary of State, Privy Councillors, Chief Justices, 
 and Judges — they none of them have any posi- 
 tion guaranteed to them in the laws of prece- 
 dence. Another curious inconsistency is the fact 
 that the eldest son of a younger son of a peer has 
 a place, while the eldest son of the eldest son of a 
 peer has no place. 
 
 In Sir Roger de Coverley occurs the passage: 
 "I have known my friend Sir Roger de Cover- 
 ley's dinner almost cold before the company 
 could adjust the ceremonials of precedence and 
 be prevailed upon to sit down to table.'* 
 
 A woman who has acquired a dignity by mar- 
 riage loses that dignity on contracting a second 
 marriage with a commoner. She may retain the 
 title by the courtesy of Society, but she loses it by 
 law. Indeed this particular phase of the law of 
 
SOCIETY 387 
 
 precedence was carried into the courts by a cer- 
 tain titled lady, who contracted a second mar- 
 riage with a commoner and was finally settled in 
 the House of Lords, judgment being given against 
 her. 
 
 In a word. Society in one sense in England is 
 part and parcel of the law of the land. "Prece- 
 dence is not regulated by mere conventional 
 arrangements; it is no fluctuating practice of 
 fashionable life, the results of voluntary com- 
 pacts in Society; but on the contrary is part and 
 parcel of the law of England," to quote from 
 Dod. 
 
 The Sovereign and the members of the Royal 
 Family are the apex, not only of the Constitu- 
 tional, but also of the social, structure of English 
 Society. Next comes the Archibishop of Canter- 
 bury, then the Lord Chancellor, then the Arch- 
 bishop of York. The Lord Chancellor's position 
 between the two, is a compromise arranged after 
 the days when the Lord Chancellor ceased to be 
 a priest. The Lord High Treasurer, if he be a 
 noble of high rank, follows after the Archbishops, 
 so, too, the Lord President of the Council, the 
 Lord Privy Seal, the Lord High Constable, the 
 Lord Steward of the Household, and several 
 other high ojB&cials, take precedence of the other 
 dukes of England, provided they are dukes them- 
 
388 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 selves, by virtue of their office, but if they are not 
 dukes then they only take their place at the head 
 of other peers of the same degree as their own. 
 With the exceptions of the two Archbishops and 
 the Lord Chancellor, the table of English pre- 
 cedence is one of personal not official rank. John 
 Jones or Henry Brown may be Lord High Con- 
 stable, or Lord Privy Seal, or the Lord Great 
 Chamberlain, but none the less the last created 
 peer would take precedence of him, though prob- 
 ably in a public procession there would be no scuf- 
 fling to assert one's self. It is much too long and 
 intricate a matter to describe in detail, and the 
 table of precedency may easily be found in any 
 English almanac or year book, should the reader 
 care to investigate for himself. Suffice it to say 
 that after those mentioned come the Dukes accord- 
 ing to the patent of their creation; eldest sons of 
 Dukes of blood royal; Marquesses in the same 
 order as Dukes; Dukes' eldest sons; Earls in 
 same order as Dukes ; younger sons of Dukes of 
 royal blood; Marquesses' eldest sons; Dukes' 
 younger sons ; Viscounts in same order as Dukes \ 
 Earls' eldest sons; Marquesses' younger sons; 
 the Bishops ; Barons in the same order as Dukes ; 
 Speaker of the House of Commons; Treasurer 
 of the King's Household; Comptroller of the 
 King's Household; Vice-Chamberlain of the 
 
SOCIETY 389 
 
 Household ; Secretaries of State under the degree 
 of Baron ; Viscounts' eldest sons ; Earls' younger 
 sons ; Barons' eldest sons ; and so on, and so on, 
 down to "Naval, Military, and other Esquires by 
 office." 
 
 As we have shown, women take the same rank 
 as their husbands, or as their elder brothers. 
 Daughters of peers rank next immediately after 
 the wives of their elder brothers, and before their 
 younger brothers' wives. The daughter of a 
 duke marrying a baron degrades to the rank of 
 baroness only, while her sisters married to com- 
 moners retain their rank and take precedence of 
 the baroness. On occasion an hostess might well 
 require to have a brain of a high mathematical 
 order, and much quickness and astuteness, to 
 marshal her guests in and out of the dining-room, 
 with due regard to their social and official rights. 
 
 The outline of these matters given here is 
 merely to impress upon the reader that there is a 
 mould in England for social life. There is a cer- 
 tain class which dominates by right of birth, tra- 
 dition, and wealth, and there are certain fixed 
 rules of the game which are as much the law of 
 the land as any other law. To the American at 
 any rate, this puts another face on the problem. 
 He must look at it with these differences well in 
 mind, and interpret it according to its own rules 
 
390 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and precedents. The wayward and vague criti- 
 cism of ignorance, or the parochial methods of 
 those who apply the standard of a limited experi- 
 ence to social affairs totally different from any- 
 thing they know, only bring discontent, bitterness 
 and teaches nothing. 
 
 Radicalism in England, whether social, polit- 
 ical, or literary, was for a long time only a costume 
 and a way of wearing the hair ; it is now a phi- 
 losophy with considerable political and some so- 
 cial power. It is not, however, of the integral 
 tone and temper of the English people. America, 
 on the other hand, has been from the first an ex- 
 periment in radicalism. Not to be a radical is 
 not to be an American. One may be by birth an 
 American, but still not be in any patriotic or 
 political sense an American. The American is 
 not merely watching, he is, or ought to be, tak- 
 ing part in the attempt of a people to govern 
 themselves, and to give big and little, high and 
 low, educated and uneducated, as nearly as may 
 be equal opportunities. 
 
 It becomes a simple matter to mark off the 
 differences which should distinguish such a 
 Society, whether we take the word as meaning the 
 whole people or accept the narrower meaning 
 thereof, from Society under monarchical rules 
 ^nd customs.. 
 
SOCIETY 391 
 
 Simplicity, not ostentation, must be the su- 
 preme virtue in such a community. In England 
 men of wealth and position feel it incumbent 
 upon them to emphasize their position by a cer- 
 tain splendor of living. In America, to empha- 
 size such things is to controvert and deny the 
 value of the main lines of growth of American 
 civilization. The Englishman hands down from 
 father to son a position and a setting which each 
 feels it incumbent upon him not as a fashion but 
 as a duty to maintain. It may be said to their 
 credit that in the main this has been an aristoc- 
 racy born to duties first, to privileges afterwards, 
 and it is because, with of course the black sheep 
 exceptions, they have lived up to this standard 
 that they still hold the place and power they do. 
 
 But the American who surrounds himself with 
 a superfluity of uniformed menials with bulging 
 calves and powdered heads is simply framing a 
 picture of life entirely inappropriate to the his- 
 tory, precedents, and raison d'etre of his country. 
 
 The recent discussions about more money for 
 our ambassadors seem to omit the pith of the 
 problem, which is, that our ambassadors are not 
 in Europe to play up to a king or to an aristoc- 
 racy, but to represent the American people. 
 When our ambassadors need a score of flunkies 
 to make a setting for their diplomatic mission, 
 
392 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 they no longer represent America. Franklin, 
 Jay, Bayard, Lowell, and Choate impressed these 
 sensible English people more, and be it said some 
 of them did far more for their country's honor, 
 peace and prosperity than any millionaire am- 
 bassador could do. A big house does not repre- 
 sent America, but sturdy simplicity, ability, and 
 the good manners of a kind heart do, and so far 
 as my experience goes, we have been fortunate 
 thus far in being represented by men of that type 
 in England. At the time of this writing, Amer- 
 ica is honored in the persons of her present 
 ambassador and his chief of staff by their repre- 
 sentation of the very best qualities of America's 
 best type of citizen. 
 
 In noting these differences, and in calling at- 
 tention to the fact that there is a constitutional 
 framework bolted together by the laws of the 
 land itself, for the reception and the moulding 
 of society, it must not be understood for a mo- 
 ment that this is Society. There are Dukes and 
 Dukes, Marquesses and Marquesses, Earls and 
 Earls, and they are no more all alike, or all of the 
 same social or political position, or importance, 
 than are the same number of butchers and bak- 
 ers. Because an Englishman by right of birth 
 and hereditary dignity is a part of the social 
 framework, does not mean that he plays a part 
 
SOCIETY 393 
 
 » 
 
 in Society, or is even admitted within its portals. 
 His birth and title give him a distinct advantage, 
 but they are by no means an open sesame. 
 
 On the contrary, the outstanding social figure 
 of the early part of the last century was a man 
 whose grandmother was a lady's maid, whose 
 mother was reputed to have been Lord North's 
 mistress, and who made his mark in the Society 
 of the day by patronizing royalty, bullying the 
 nobility, and insulting his equals. It must have 
 been rather a dull Society which suffered Beau 
 Brummel for any length of time. It always has 
 been rather an easily amused Society, and is so 
 to-day. The men are out-door men, many of 
 them hungry and tired by eight p. m., preferring 
 physical rather than mental sensations. The two 
 popular stage sensations of the late season, much 
 discussed even by serious men, and patronized by 
 both the smart and the great, were two unclothed 
 women, one interpreting Chopin with her legs, 
 the other representing Bhudda with her hips. 
 They were curiously enough both Americans, 
 and I could not help thinking that they must both 
 have died of laughter had they been provided 
 with sleeves to laugh in. To see an English 
 Prime Minister assiduously offering his social pat- 
 ronage to a provider of this quality of entertain- 
 ment is a feature of English life which leaves th^ 
 
394 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Frenchman, the American, and the German with 
 a bewildering sense that he is either mad or blind. 
 
 There is, however, a feature of English social 
 life which makes it interesting even despite itself. 
 England is an Empire. She has men fighting, 
 travelling, exploring, governing and acting as 
 her diplomatic agents in every corner of the 
 world. These men come and go through Lon- 
 don, and it is a rare dinner party, or drawing- 
 room function where one or more men are not 
 present who offer variety and interest as a mere 
 result of their experiences. They supply the 
 something new and fresh, without which any 
 Society becomes a very dull meeting of the same 
 people over the same bowl of gossip. 
 
 As in other walks in life here, competition is 
 keen. Lady A., or Lady B., or Mrs. Jones, or Mrs. 
 White, could neither attract nor compel people to 
 their houses night after night to meet over and 
 over again a few men and women drawn always 
 from the same knot of playmates. Just to be 
 seen at Lady A.'s, or at Mrs. Jones's would tempt 
 nobody after a certain time. London is far too 
 full of interesting things to do, lively people to 
 meet, and an unending variety of social and other 
 amusements, to make it worth anybody's while 
 to be entertained always in the same way by the 
 same small knot of people. 
 
SOCIETY 395 
 
 He must be very difficult to amuse or interest 
 who finds time hanging heavy upon his hands in 
 London. Of a morning he may ride or watch 
 the riders in Hyde Park. Sunday after church 
 he may see a procession of all the social nota- 
 bilities of the season again in Hyde Park. Sun- 
 day afternoon he may stroll about Tattersall's 
 and see English men and women in their worship 
 of the Horse. With a taxi-cab he may get to a 
 different golf-course every day for a month, and 
 none of them bad. There is cricket at Lord's 
 and the Oval. There is polo at Ranelagh, Roe- 
 hampton and Hurlingham. There are num- 
 berless excursions on the Thames in an electric 
 launch, or he may wield the oars or punt himself. 
 He may have the box seat, or, if he be proficient 
 with the reins, take the cushion himself for a 
 drive on the coach to half a dozen or more 
 different places. 
 
 There is lawn tennis at the Queen's Club, and 
 real tennis there and at Prince's, and he must 
 be friendless indeed if he have not a friend to 
 introduce him at one or the other or both of these 
 clubs. The English clubs are friendliness itself, 
 and again he may find any one of half a dozen 
 open to him if he prove himself a clubable person. 
 
 If he cares for more serious things, I defy him 
 to find more courtesy anywhere than will be his 
 
396 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 portion as a guest of the powers that be at the 
 British Museum, where quiet, capable servants, 
 and one of the great libraries of the world are put 
 at his disposal. The Tate Gallery, the Wallace 
 Collection, the National Gallery, and the Na- 
 tional Portrait Gallery are delightful places to idle 
 in and to recreate one's belief in English art after 
 an hour at the Royal Academy — at any rate the 
 Royal Academy of the last two years. He can 
 hardly stay long in England without making 
 friends, and then he may see many of the private 
 collections of pictures, porcelains, and historical 
 treasures in some of the great houses in and about 
 London. If he cares to see the law courts, the 
 police courts, or to visit the great universities, 
 or the House of Commons, or the House of 
 Lords I can only say from personal experience 
 that there will be no lack of hospitality shown 
 him, and nothing spared to satisfy any legitimate 
 curiosity or interest. 
 
 On one of my own frequent visits to the House 
 of Commons, the member who introduced me 
 carried his hospitality to the limit of himself 
 "heckling" a Cabinet Minister, and then making 
 a half-hour speech, whether solely for my enter- 
 tainment or not I cannot say. 
 
 I have often hunted from London, and very 
 comfortably too; and if one cares for racing. 
 
SOCIETY 397 
 
 there is scarcely a day during the racing season 
 when one may not travel down to a race meeting, 
 and be back in time for dinner. The National 
 Sporting Club has capital sparring exhibitions 
 every Monday night of its season, and sometimes 
 oftener. ' 
 
 Indeed, one must go out of his way to choose 
 an amusement or an interest that may not be his 
 for the asking. It must have been an effeminate 
 American who remarked that all good Americans 
 go to Paris when they die. Paris may be a good 
 place to go if one is dead or decrepit, or if one 
 loves no more virile exercise than that taken on 
 the cushions of an automobile, but men who are 
 alive and well would prefer London. It is not to 
 be wondered at then that if these be a few of 
 the interests open to the stranger the Londoner 
 finds too many distractions to permit any tread- 
 mill social requirements to curtail his comings 
 and goings. 
 
 Although snubbing and climbing, jealousy and 
 malice, play their part here as elsewhere, the 
 social status of many is so assured that they need 
 not, and do not, attend much to what is brought 
 them, or taken from them by their social com- 
 panions. There is an ease of manner, a sim- 
 plicity of speech and bearing, a lack of effort, 
 which are, I take it, the result of this social 
 
398 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 stability. But this is only true of the best and 
 the highest placed classes in England. America 
 is not alone the home of social awkwardness. 
 The laborious gentility, the careful speech, the 
 pose of being at home, ses nonchalances qui sont 
 les plus grands artifices, are painfully apparent 
 amongst English men and women, who are striv- 
 ing to appear what they are not, or who are out 
 and out "bounders." The natural shyness, and 
 slowness, and lack of adaptability of the race 
 come out with mortifying distinctness when the 
 English undertake to play a social part which is 
 a bit above their station. 
 
 Those who have suffered socially, financially, 
 or morally, the frayed, the failed, and the flayed, 
 are more horribly conspicuous in their efforts to 
 appear at ease here than anywhere else. The 
 others appear all the more serene and confident 
 by comparison. These latter worry very little over 
 questions of whether they profit or not by being 
 seen in this company or that, and as a conse- 
 quence the same general law which welcomes 
 prowess wherever it appears in England applies 
 to that microcosm of life called Society. Ability, 
 success, wealth, provided they be amenable to 
 the manners, speech, and to that curious cate- 
 gorical imperative of the etiquette of the day and 
 generation, go where they please and outdistance 
 
SOCIETY S99 
 
 easily the mere holders of titles, no matter what 
 they be. I have all through these pages made 
 it a law not to mention names, or to refer to per- 
 sonal experiences, otherwise one might easily 
 offer instance after instance, and example after 
 example, of the truth of this. Every Englishman 
 knows — the American must accept it without 
 proof — members of the nobility, from dukes down , 
 who are hopelessly left out in social matters. 
 The genuine democratic instinct of the people 
 makes itself felt even in the limited companies of 
 which we are writing. Not even the King him- 
 self can assure the election of a "bounder" to a 
 club or reestablish a damaged duke or earl, or 
 demand and be accorded entrance and enter- 
 tainment in certain great houses for his friends. 
 No Englishman living knows the English, how- 
 ever, better than the present occupant of the 
 throne, and he rarely makes blunders of a social 
 or diplomatic description. Indeed, no ruler in 
 Europe, or anywhere else, makes so few. While 
 of the Queen, one is not exaggerating, or mawk- 
 ish, in saying that she is not only popular but the 
 darling of the people, high and low alike. 
 
 Even in Society a man must do something, be 
 something, to hold his place or to get a footing. 
 It begins at school where the boys must devote 
 themselves to one or another game. It is not a 
 
400 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 matter of choice. They are impelled to it, not 
 only by the authorities, but by the even more 
 rigorous laws of the boys themselves. One must 
 be a "wet-bob" or a "dry-bob." One must 
 row, or play cricket, or foot-ball, one or the other, 
 but play and play hard they must. They be- 
 lieve in concentration and hardness. ^^Virescit 
 valuer e virtus'^ is the motto of both masters and 
 boys. This education, like life, is terrible for the 
 feeble, but splendid for the strong. Nicholson, 
 Burton, Palmer, Gordon, Cromer, Kitchener, 
 Curzon, Milner, Rhodes, Roberts, and hundreds 
 more, less conspicuous, but all heroic servants 
 of England are the result of this policy — even 
 the stranger knows their names and their ser- 
 vices. Lord Roberts, an old man then, and 
 grieving for the loss of his only son, when asked 
 to go to Africa replied: "I have been keeping 
 myself fit in case of such an emergency!" 
 
 This training in their youth has much to do, 
 I believe, with the almost universal reticence of 
 manner and of speech among the better classes. 
 Boasting, "bucking" as they call it, talking of 
 one's self, of what one has, of what one has done, 
 is seldom or never heard. It is with much 
 difficulty that you can get even an account of 
 first-rate deeds out of first-rate men. Men never 
 wear buttons or orders or advertise their dis- 
 
SOCIETY 401 
 
 tinctions. They hate uniforms, and shed them 
 as though they carried disease whenever their 
 duties no longer require them. 
 
 We are a more voluble and peacocky people. 
 We spread such tails as we have, rather too often 
 perhaps. Men of merely formal rank love the 
 titles of "General" or "Colonel" or "Captain." 
 Others adorn their buttonholes with orders of 
 foreign wars, or other conflicts, who have never 
 left their native shores and never seen a gun 
 fired in actual warfare. These are trifling dis- 
 plays of a certain sort of theatrical vanity that 
 do little harm, but the lack of self-control, the 
 lack of personal dignity which such small vanities 
 imply may in larger matters do great harm. 
 
 A certain Cabinet Minister, after the death of 
 the late Prime Minister, made a deplorable 
 speech in the House of Lords. The poor man 
 was evidently, but quite unknown to his col- 
 leagues, on the verge of a mental collapse. No 
 word of that scene was heard outside the cham- 
 ber. No reporter, no servant, no member, be- 
 trayed the lamentable breakdown of the offender. 
 What splendid magnanimity, and courtesy, that 
 implied. Can any people be the better if in the 
 evening every newspaper in the land is shouting 
 the details of such an incident through the streets 
 by the raucous voices of its distributers ? 
 
402 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Liberty I would have, yes, and light upon dark 
 places where plots against the people are hatched, 
 but I would have justice and courteous reticence 
 too. One of the great defenders of the American 
 people in their days of infancy, Burke, wrote: 
 "Wherever a separation is made between liberty 
 and justice neither is in my opinion safe." It 
 is never just to be cruel. It is the weak the un- 
 controlled men in any community, in any coun- 
 try, who through vanity or love of notoriety throw 
 their own and other people's dignity to the winds. 
 
 It is a strange word, and I know little of its 
 etymological ancestry, but it conveys so definite 
 a personality to my mind, that I shall use it in the 
 hope that my contemporaries appreciate the nice 
 shades of meaning it conveys. The word is 
 Nincompoop. There is no place for this creature 
 ip either English life, or in that particular essence 
 of English life — English Society. Bad men 
 there are, and women of the type of that ac- 
 quaintance of Bos well of whom Dr. Johnson 
 said: "Sir, I think your lady is very fit for a 
 brothel." The rules and the curiosities of the 
 laws of Society are as strange and as difficult to 
 define here as elsewhere. They call the chess- 
 board white, they call it black, as Browning says, 
 but why, no man knows. 
 
 But be they bad or good, no man is suffered 
 
SOCIETY 403 
 
 long, no man holds his place, who does not do 
 something. Even Beau Brummel was the most 
 finished social bully of his day. Even the 
 English themselves scarce realize how often they 
 ask the question, "What has he done.?" The 
 women ask it, the men ask it. One would expect 
 that question in a democracy rather than here. 
 "Who was his father.?" or "Whom did he mar- 
 ry.?" or "How did he make his money.?" are 
 familiar questions asked about newcomers in 
 America. This English society still intuitively 
 and instinctively asks the question, the answer 
 to which throughout their history, has been the 
 key to unlock every door, whether political or 
 social. Above all things, if the new man has 
 done something for England, his place is assured, 
 and his reward little short of munificent. And if 
 a man be born to a high social position all the 
 more is expected of him, and if he does not live 
 up to the standard, he is even more an outcast 
 than is one whose social birthright is accom- 
 panied by few responsibilities. Their great 
 nobles are great by reason of their duties and 
 responsibilities. An idle, or a vicious bearer of a 
 great name, is more conspicuously ignored than a 
 commoner of the same calibre. 
 
 It goes almost without saying that much of 
 the talk about Society here or in America is 
 
404 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 purely fantastic and imaginary. Much of the 
 writing about Society in America is merely silly, 
 when it is not of the Fireside Companion quality, 
 adopted by the socialist to advertise his wares. So- 
 ciety in America is awkward, but it is not vicious. 
 Many rich people do not know what to do with 
 their money, just as the yokel in the drawing-room 
 does not know what to do with his hands. As Cle- 
 ment of Alexandria phrased it nearly two thousand 
 years ago, so the situation is not new: "Riches 
 wriggling in the grasp of the inexperienced." 
 
 The most obvious thing about Society, whether 
 English or American, is that its behavior is so 
 correct, its morals so good. When one remem- 
 bers that Society, at any rate in America, is so 
 largely composed of the unemployed rich, with 
 money, leisure, and constant temptation. Society 
 compares very favorably indeed with any other 
 section of the population. That the wealthy 
 leisure class is no worse than the hard-working 
 poorer classes is surprising after all. There is less 
 drunkenness, less wife-beating, less murder and 
 assault in the West End than in the East End, and 
 when one realizes that money and idleness are 
 more common in the West End than in the East, 
 this is a matter for congratulation. It is the 
 cheaper newspapers, not the people themselves, 
 who are bad. The thousands of readers who 
 
SOCIETY 405 
 
 pore over the doings of Society would mob the 
 newspaper oflfices if they knew how dull and 
 commonplace are the heroes and heroines of the 
 comedy, and how bored they often are with 
 themselves and one another. The sins of Society 
 are only the sins of the slums gilded. Adultery, 
 stealing, drunkenness, sycophancy, are much 
 alike and seldom romantic, wherever we find 
 them. Society is used by the newspapers as a 
 sort of continuous side show. The Bearded 
 Lady, the Skeleton Man, the Giant, and the 
 Dwarf are really impostures, but the gullible 
 public are kept in the dark, and not allowed to 
 know that the Wild Man of Borneo is only a 
 tattooed medical student, who will return, in 
 due time, to resume his chosen studies. If 
 Society were really occupied in hard drinking, in 
 participation in voluptuous entertainments, in 
 orgies of expenditure, in the suppression of child- 
 birth, and at the same time indulging amongst 
 one another in the desultory amativeness of 
 Australian rabbits. Society would be rather excit- 
 ing — which of all things it is not. The news- 
 papers, and a few irresponsible writers, are the 
 self-instituted proprietors of this collection of 
 freaks which they call Society, and by means of 
 cheap paper and the extraordinary development 
 of the printing press, they exhibit daily in every 
 
406 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 city, town, and hamlet in America. They know 
 very well that the Bearded Lady's beard, and the 
 Wild Man from Borneo's skin, cannot be in- 
 spected closely by the audience, and so they riot 
 fearlessly in their descriptions. But there has 
 been nothing in heaven or earth, or the waters 
 under the earth, since Barnum died, which at all 
 resembles what they picture. 
 
 Of our ninety millions of people, the large 
 majority are hard workers, clean in their living, 
 economical in expenditure, and scrupulously 
 honest in their dealings. The newspapers amuse 
 them with pictures of a pronounced melodramatic 
 order labelled Society. All the things they do 
 not do, and do not have, are represented to be 
 the daily provender of these morally amorph- 
 ous beings. To them, it is inferred, dollars 
 are as doughnuts, champagne is as well-water, 
 and when they are not being fined for the ex- 
 cessive speed of their motor cars in one court, 
 they are being divorced in another, or buying 
 up bucolic magistrates, to remarry them in an- 
 other. 
 
 It is only where intelligent people treat such 
 humbug seriously that harm is done, or when an 
 official, or a writer, for revenue or for advertise- 
 ment, pretends to believe these tales and makes 
 capital out of them, that class may be set against 
 
SOCIETY 407 
 
 class, and real trouble follow. The only effective 
 criticism that can be passed upon people, is to 
 be better than they are. Exploiting the weak- 
 nesses, and exaggerating the foibles of any class 
 of one's countrymen is not a man's task. It is 
 easy to play upon the credulity of a simple 
 people, and simple people living far from this 
 madding crowd may be excused for being de- 
 ceived; but our more intelligent and more ex- 
 perienced people at home and the same class in 
 England must be dubbed stupid when they 
 accept such descriptions and, alas, mit der 
 Dummheit Kdmpfen Goiter selbst vergebens. 
 
 It is necessarily true that in a country, as in 
 England, where social functions may be said to 
 be, some of them at least, a part of the machinery 
 of government, and where many others are 
 avowedly for political purposes, the ends and 
 aims of Society's doings are more clear and more 
 dignified than in a Society, as in America — 
 outside of the political doings of Society in 
 Washington — where apparently the end is 
 amusement only and the aim diversion. 
 
 Lady Palmerston was a great political hostess, 
 and credited even with keeping her husband in 
 power. The great nobles with great houses in 
 London who entertain the King of Spain at a 
 ball, or the colonial visitors at a reception, or the 
 
408 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 Church Congress at a reception, do so as a public 
 duty. No one in London imagines for a moment 
 that such entertainments are given to enhance 
 their social standing, or that such entertainments 
 can be other than rather tiresome functions to 
 the host and hostess, however smiling and ami- 
 able they may appear when you make your bow 
 to them. Such entertainments are undertaken 
 as a patriotic duty. Until comparatively recent 
 years, the House of Commons was rightly named 
 the best club in London. Its members were 
 drawn largely from the same class from which the 
 members of Society are drawn. Though this has 
 greatly changed, noticeably so since the last gen- 
 eral election, there is still a pronounced flavor of 
 politics in Society, and of Society in politics. 
 This gives Society a certain consistency, a certain 
 seriousness, a certain excuse for being. All sets, 
 the "smart," the *' fashionable," the "conserva- 
 tive," the artistic and literary — and Society 
 divides into groups along these general lines — 
 are, from the very fact that their members and 
 their families and friends are of the official gov- 
 erning class, interested in politics. Indeed one 
 might say that while Society's vocation is amuse- 
 ment, its avocation is politics. Here again the 
 fact that politics, domestic and Imperial, are con- 
 centrated in London during a few months in the 
 
SOCIETY 409 
 
 year explains to the American how this can be so. 
 This political — using the word in a broad sense 
 — atmosphere of social life in England is a very 
 marked feature to an American. At luncheons, 
 at dinners, during a call at tea-time, even at gar- 
 den parties, the interest is either sport or politics 
 or both. 
 
 Racing in England is a veritable obsession. 
 It not only engrosses the entire attention of many 
 distinguishedly "smart" members of Society, it 
 is one of the serious occupations of a number of 
 the great nobles of the country, and the betting 
 side of it permeates to every hole and corner of 
 English life. One need not be an over observant 
 student of Engish life to note that a lion and a 
 horse with a horn on its forehead uphold the 
 English shield — and that St. George of Eng- 
 land, though he was a pork butcher, is astride a 
 horse as he kills the dragon. One may say with 
 some truth that "smart" Society in England 
 revolves around the King and the horse. There 
 is, however, a conservative, wealthy, tradition- 
 loving section of Society, represented, let us say, 
 by the Duchess of Buccleuch, which, though 
 representing Society as much as others, have little 
 more in common with those above-mentioned 
 than has the Bishop of London with the secretary 
 of the Jockey Club. 
 
410 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 There is a difference between threads which 
 interlace and threads which tie together, and this 
 may serve as illustrating the relations of the dif- 
 ferent groups of English Society to one another. 
 They all interlace, but they do not all tie together. 
 They cross but they do not knot. 
 
 I have no mandate, and no taste, for the task 
 of cataloguing names, of retailing scandal, of 
 hinting at rumors. No one can live among 
 friendly people without hearing, and seeing, and 
 knowing what it must be a point of honor not to 
 reveal. The broad outlines are quite enough to 
 teach all that it can profit others to learn. The 
 squalid, foul-mouthed, and mean-spirited chron- 
 icling of the weaknesses of men and women, 
 whether they be placed low or high in social rank, 
 can never be the business of one who studies 
 other countries, or loves his own. 
 
 "To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little 
 and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole 
 a family happier for his presence, to renounce 
 when that shall be necessary and not to be em- 
 bittered, to keep a few friends, but these without 
 capitulation — above all, on the same grim con- 
 dition, to keep friends with himself — here is a 
 task for all that a man has of fortitude and deli- 
 cacy. ... In his own life then a man is not to 
 expect happiness, only to profit by it gladly when 
 
SOCIETY 411 
 
 it shall arise; he is on duty here; he knows not 
 how or why, and does not need to know; he 
 knows not for what hire, and must not ask. 
 Somehow or other, though he does not know 
 what goodness is, he must try to be good ; some- 
 how or other, though he cannot tell what will do 
 it, he must try to give happiness to others.'* An 
 Englishman wrote that, and from the days of Sir 
 Philip Sidney all through the years till now, there 
 have been Englishmen who have faced life in 
 that way. The names of many of those gentle- 
 men we know, and their deeds and their fame 
 we know, and we, English and Americans alike, 
 cherish their memories as a joint heritage. 
 There are many such in both countries to-day. 
 Society is not composed entirely of such here or 
 elsewhere, but it is not altogether lacking in 
 either men or women who wear the amulet of 
 chivalry, even in these prosaic days. 
 
X 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IT will be a disappointing miscarriage of the 
 author's intention if these pages merely 
 serve to ruffle the feelings of the English, 
 and to makeAmericans more carelessly confident. 
 Both nations have something to learn of one 
 another, and England being so much the older 
 country her experiments, her failures, and her 
 successes have the advantage of the searching 
 test of time — and certainly time is either the 
 father or mother of truth. One is loath to accept 
 new social or political policies too readily; one 
 is equally loath to discard methods that have 
 endured the strain of centuries. 
 
 The American who learns nothing from a 
 study of the English people cannot be said to aid 
 much in the solution of his own country's prob- 
 lems. 
 
 First I put their respect for the law, their law- 
 abidingness, and their hearty approval of swift 
 justice, illustrated over and over again in the 
 foregoing pages. In a country where political 
 
 412 
 
CONCLUSION 413 
 
 assassins, financial buccaneers, and wealthy law- 
 breakers generally, may, and sometimes do, 
 thread the courts of justice as in a maze, till pa- 
 tience is exhausted and escape all too often made 
 possible, there is still something to learn from 
 the English. He is either blind, or a traitor to his 
 country, who does not see this and proclaim it. 
 
 That we have many races to deal with makes 
 the situation more difficult, but should not in the 
 least interfere with our aim and our steady 
 progress toward reform. 
 
 The reticence, the self-control, the even temper 
 of the English, high and low alike, irritate the 
 American often enough, when they should, on the 
 contrary, teach him the value of these things. 
 
 The homogeneity of the people, and the result- 
 ant good feeling and fairness on both sides; the 
 wholeness of the nation, the interlacing of the 
 classes, which result in the sturdiest kind of 
 patriotism, verging though it does at times to 
 the side of commercial selfishness, are well worth 
 imitating. 
 
 The enormous amount of unpaid and volun- 
 tary service to the State, and to one's neighbors, 
 in England, results in the solution of one of the 
 most harassing problems of every wealthy nation, 
 it arms the leisure classes with something worthy, 
 something imporljant to do. Not only their wil- 
 
414 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 lingness to accept, but their insistence upon, the 
 duty owed to the nation by the rich and the edu- 
 cated has, I beUeve, more than anything else, 
 given them the long lead in national predomi- 
 nance that they have held until lately. When a 
 man has made wealth and leisure for himself, or 
 inherited them from others, he is deemed a rene- 
 gade if he does not promptly offer them as a 
 willing sacrifice upon the altar of his country's 
 welfare. There is no blinking the truth that 
 these people have not only an unequalled training 
 for governing, which begins as far back as the 
 Sixth form of their public schools, but they have 
 an instinct for it. The sober, slow, even temper 
 fits them for the task. They govern relentlessly, 
 but confidently and fairly. They govern by law, 
 not by autocratic methods, and they govern al- 
 ways with the aim of increasing, not decreasing, 
 the personal freedom of the governed. They 
 govern to the glory of England, not to exploit 
 themselves. They know that the long years of 
 expatriation and obscurity, if crowned by success, 
 will be amply, even splendidly, rewarded. 
 
 England dangles the costliest prizes that are 
 given to men anywhere in the world before the 
 eyes of her citizens. High rank and great for- 
 tunes are offered to any man who distinguishes 
 himself in her service. What England would 
 
CONCLUSION 415 
 
 have given Washington, and Franklin, and Hani' 
 ilton, and Grant, and Lee, and Jackson, and 
 Sherman, and Lincoln, and Cleveland, Taft, and 
 Magoon, and others, had they been servants of 
 hers, one hesitates for fear of exaggeration to 
 say. The head of their church, the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, is paid $75,000 a year; the 
 Archbishop of York, $50,000; the Bishop of 
 London, $50,000; the Lord High Chancellor, 
 $50,000; the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, $100,- 
 000; the Lord Mayor of London, $50,000; 
 the Head Masters of their great Public Schools 
 are said to make, if they have a house, as 
 much as from $25,000 to $40,000; their ambas- 
 sadors to the great Powers receive the equivalent 
 of $50,000; and the men who conquer and con- 
 trol for them in their colonies are rewarded as we 
 have seen. Bear in mind, too, that any man 
 may come to the front in England, whatever his 
 origin. Kitchener and Roberts worked their way 
 up from the bottom. Chamberlain and Asquith, 
 Lloyd George, Haldane and others — do not 
 belong by birth to the governing class, and the 
 same may be said of hundreds more, now con- 
 spicuous in England's service. These prizes are 
 not for a select few. They are impartially dis- 
 tributed. There you have the soundest philoso- 
 phy, and the most generous and fairest practice 
 
416 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 of democracy in the world to-day. Their method 
 is not to pull every man down to a barren equal- 
 ity, but to push every man up to a brave ideal. 
 
 Ill-gotten wealth, misused power, a weakly 
 wielded inheritance, receive little homage in 
 England. We sometimes make mistakes about 
 them in that matter, and call them snobs. It is 
 true they love a lord, and cringe to wealth and 
 power, but this homage is widespread and a part 
 of the national character, because at bottom they 
 expect much, and have so often received much, 
 from rank, and wealth, and power. 
 
 There were fifteen hundred Etonians serving 
 in the Boer war, and one hundred and fifty of 
 them lost their lives. Probably a nearly similar 
 proportion was furnished from other schools ac- 
 cording to their size, Eton being the largest public 
 school in England. There is somthing to be said 
 even for their love of a lord if they receive fair 
 value for their loyalty, and it must be said that 
 when the pinch comes the Engish noble and the 
 English gentleman have always lived up to their 
 obligations. 
 
 This accounts for the fact that in this country 
 of constitutionally fixed class distinctions there is 
 so little class feeling. The Russian noble, insti- 
 gating a war to save a commercial concession and 
 accompanied to the battlefield by champagne 
 
CONCLUSION 417 
 
 and mistresses, has no parallel here. They have 
 their faults and their black sheep, but their faults 
 and weaknesses are not those of feline effeminacy. 
 
 The hundred years of republican government 
 in France and America, diversified in France by 
 autocracy and monarchy, have had little effect 
 upon them. Indeed, monarchy was never more 
 popular in England than to-day. Even the new 
 temper, which is pushing the State on to become 
 a grandmotherly guardian of the people makes 
 but slow progress. Shorter hours for labor, a 
 minimum wage, State insurance, the pensioning 
 of the aged, the free feeding of school children, 
 and the taxing of incomes upon a scale upwards, 
 are new to England. 
 
 In spite of the demagogue — and the dema- 
 gogue is having his day in England just now — 
 the people seem to have a stability of common- 
 sense which is even more valuable than a training 
 in economics. Leisure, which shorter hours im- 
 ply, has no value in and of itself. More people 
 misuse it than profit by it, to whatever class they 
 belong. Leisure is the tag of the classes — of the 
 rich, of the great — so foolish people think at least, 
 and therefore they demand it as one of the per- 
 quisites of equality. Leisure in reality is nothing 
 of the kind. Leisure is the residuum of econo- 
 my. All men may have it, and all economical 
 
418 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 men, whatever their work, do have it. Leisure 
 is, and always has been, the reward of eco- 
 nomical men. Many idle men never have it. 
 Shorter hours do not produce it, pensions do 
 not produce it. The only thing that produces 
 leisure is work, and hard, painful work at 
 that. You cannot dodge pain as part of the 
 heritage of mankind — you may perhaps change 
 the kind. It would make us all soft if you could. 
 Some men will always have to have their legs 
 cut off as a result of unavoidable accident, or as 
 a result of courage that could not be denied; all 
 you can do is to discover, and to use anaesthetics 
 and to some extent relieve the pain of the opera- 
 tion, but no State controlled by mortal man will 
 ever make accidents, disease, and suffering im- 
 possible. The permanent destiny of mankind 
 is to work, and to some extent to suffer, and the 
 less work the more suffering. 
 
 It is the ghastly portent of the time that social 
 and political forces are demanding that men 
 should work less instead of planning to make it 
 wholesome for them to work more. Work, and 
 nothing else and nothing less, is man's salvation. 
 
 It is easy to see how this new doctrine has 
 arisen. As the belief in the supernatural, or to 
 put it in the common parlance of the street, the 
 belief in God, has grown less strong, there has 
 
CONCLUSION 419 
 
 come a preposterous belief in man, a deification 
 of men. Men have transferred their allegiance 
 and their thoughts from God to man. The Chan- 
 ning school of Unitarianism in New England, 
 which revolted from the exaggerated orthodoxy of 
 Jonathan Edwards, and the philosophy of Comte 
 in France, are organized illustrations of the bet- 
 ter side of this change. But this refinement has 
 percolated down through the masses in the coarse 
 form of a mere vulgar and frankly selfish social- 
 ism. Man is to be the god, and as such is to be 
 worshipped, provided for, and exalted. The 
 fundamental philosophy underlying all forms of 
 socialism, disguise it as you will, is the worship of 
 man. The pandering to this new doctrine in the 
 name of Christian socialism is simply loose-mind- 
 edness. The pith of Christianity and the pith 
 of socialism are as the poles apart. But the pul- 
 pit has its demagogues, and its opportunists, no 
 less than the forum. This diluted Christianity, 
 which accepts the doctrines whilst waiving the 
 obligations, is nowadays dubbed manly. Manly 
 merely because it sides with man against God, 
 but could anything be less so } It sugars the pen- 
 alties, softens the warnings, emasculates the 
 commandments, and all to please the mob; not 
 to harden them, not to inspire them, not to lift 
 them, but to throw their thoughts back upon 
 
420 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 themselves. Christianity is at least virile enough 
 to crucify its God, and to announce that pain 
 points the way to salvation. This new god is to 
 be fed and educated for nothing as a child ; is to 
 work only eight hours a day as an adult ; is to be 
 pensioned at seventy, and never to bear a cross, 
 much less be nailed upon one, if by any means it 
 can be avoided. 
 
 We in America are only just recovering from 
 an epigram which held that labor should not be 
 crucified. The only labor that counts for any- 
 thing in the world has always been, and always 
 will be, born of pain. That is its glory. The 
 nearer labor comes to being a sacrifice of self, the 
 nearer the laborer comes to being a hero and a 
 saint. Labor is dignified only when it ceases to 
 watch the clock, and when duty calls is willing 
 to bear a cross. Wherever and whenever the 
 individual, or any class in the community, 
 whether rich or poor, balks at labor, at pain, at 
 sacrifice, at the cross in short, you have in that 
 individual and in that class a menace to the com- 
 munity and to the State. And it is this very 
 individual, and this same class, that the profes- 
 sional philanthropist, the political and economic 
 sentimentalist, is doing his best to encourage. 
 There is no surer, no shorter way to murder the 
 State than to keep such as these alive. This new 
 
CONCLUSION 421 
 
 doctrine, that at all hazards men must live, is a 
 pagan doctrine, and bad morality and bad eco- 
 nomics as well. It was a French judge who met 
 the issue as it should be met. The prisoner 
 before him charged with stealing bread said: 
 "Ma foi, il faut vivre!" "Je ne vois pas la 
 necessite!" replied the judge. 
 
 I have no intention of sermonizing, or of stray- 
 ing from the subject. I have tried briefly to 
 describe a prevalent philosophy of the day which 
 enlists demagogues, opportunists, and, in the case 
 of France at any rate, practically dominates the 
 situation. There can be no question of her de- 
 cadence as a result of this, which shows itself 
 clearly in the departments of industry, and of 
 commercial and mercantile enterprise. It is said 
 by an authority on the subject that this is the 
 fundamental evil, viz., "the colossally dispro- 
 portionate proportion of the number of officials 
 maintained by the State." This develops a men- 
 tality characterizing not only the whole official 
 world, but those connected with officials, and 
 those who hope to become officials. Their minds 
 become torpid, they are exhausted by the least 
 effort on their own behalf. In a word they are 
 emasculated. All these superfluous officials in- 
 stead of being citizens who produce, are parasites 
 and consumers. At the end of the Empire these 
 
422 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 people numbered less than two hundred and fifty 
 thousand. Between January first, 1906, and 
 January first, 1907, they have increased by two 
 hundred thousand, and before long they will 
 number a million, out of the total population of 
 France of 38,000,000. One man out of every 
 thirty-eight, counting men, women and children, 
 in France a "torpid," "emasculated" dependent 
 upon the State. That is socialism as nearly as 
 any State has adopted it thus far, and who ap- 
 plauds it.^ This is the system of coddling men 
 into the Kingdom of Heaven, and who regards 
 the France of to-day as in the least resembling 
 that locality .? 
 
 Even the casual reader will have noticed in 
 these pages reference to the large sums spent in 
 support of an ever increasing number of paupers. 
 It looks on the surface as though here in England, 
 too, there is a tendency to lean unduly upon the 
 State. The generous, not to say affectionate 
 interest in her poorer population by England 
 arises, however, from quite another source. I 
 still believe, though at the present writing the 
 signs of the times do not perhaps warrant it, that 
 the English have no taste for the bureaucratic 
 socialism I have outlined. It is because they are 
 English, not because there is any general feeling 
 that they have a right to be supported by the 
 
CONCLUSION 423 
 
 State, that there is in England this generous 
 largesse for the poor and the unfortunate. There 
 is a wide difference between the kindly doles of 
 a friend, and the assumption of a right to pick 
 his purse. England's million paupers are not 
 such a drag upon the State, not such a numbing 
 influence upon others, not such an example of 
 unenterprising feeders at the public crib, as are 
 the million petty officials of the State in France. 
 At least, nobody in England strives and studies to 
 become a pauper, as his end and aim in life; 
 while thousands in France prepare themselves to 
 pass the examinations entitling them to become 
 pensioners of the State, to be drugged to torpidity 
 by petty duties for the rest of their lives. There 
 is a possible political and domestic salvation for 
 the pauper, there is none for the petty employe 
 of the State. 
 
 He has studied England in vain if he has not 
 convinced himself that the core of their vigor and 
 enterprise is their independence, their individ- 
 ualism, their willingness and their ability to 
 take care of themselves under all circumstances. 
 This socialistic condition of national life produces 
 men of ignoble economies and timorous patriot- 
 ism. What boots it that the Bank of France 
 to-day has a horde of over $700,000,000 in gold, 
 more than any other country at the moment, if 
 
424 ENGLAND AND THE* ENGLISH 
 
 she cannot breed men to defend it, men to use it 
 in her own industries and commercial enterprises, 
 and if at any moment Germany may march 
 again across her frontiers to take another mil- 
 liard and another of her departments ? What 
 are such economies worth to the people of 
 France ? 
 
 We have .remarked more than once in these 
 pages that there were here and there signs of 
 decadence in England, that perhaps we may be 
 looking on at the parting of the ways in the 
 history of this colossal Empire. If this be true, 
 we have put our finger on the sore spot. Their 
 history, their traditions and precedents, all point 
 away from this modern tendency to lean upon 
 the State. 
 
 The suffrage is new in England, the newly 
 made electorate is still uneducated, still compara- 
 tively little interested in larger political affairs. 
 Even now the great majority of the English are 
 only — as they always have been — keen to be 
 well governed, they show no signs of artificial 
 political excitement looking toward an active 
 participation for themselves. They still prefer 
 to be let alone as they did a thousand years ago. 
 It is a novelty to them to find that they can coerce 
 the State into taking care of them. For the mo- 
 ment the novelty of the situation stirs a certain 
 
CONCLUSION 425 
 
 number of them, and there are self-appointed 
 leaders in plenty to urge them on. But not until 
 the Saxon ceases to be a Saxon will he really take 
 to this kindly and eagerly. If that time ever 
 comes then indeed the British Empire will 
 crumble fast enough. 
 
 These days of new commercial rivals, and of 
 intense commercial competition, have had a 
 serious effect upon English life as we have seen, 
 and it is folly for the Englishman to ignore them, 
 or to pooh-pooh them. It is, however, folly worse 
 confounded to turn from his virile lineage of 
 individual independence to the weak alternative 
 of petty State interference at every turn as a 
 refuge or a remedy. Grant that one in forty of 
 the inhabitants is a domestic servant, that one in 
 every forty-four is a pauper, that one in every 
 eleven in Ireland is living on the rates, that 
 lunacy is increasing, that the birth-rate is steadily 
 declining, that 30.7 per cent, of the population of 
 London is in poverty, that the entire middle and 
 upper class in London number only 17.8 per 
 cent, of the population, and all this is true, does 
 the solution of these and other problems lie in any 
 scheme for making men less independent, more 
 timorous, more ignobly cautious, readier to trust 
 to the State rather than to themselves to extricate 
 the nation from this slough of despond ? It may 
 
426 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 be so, but as I study them and their history, I 
 try in vain to make myself see it. 
 
 Whether as individuals, or as nations, we co- 
 operate valiantly in bringing upon ourselves our 
 own unhappiness. England has been steadily in- 
 creasing her taxation, steadily increasing the toll 
 upon large fortunes of late, flirting in short with 
 the theory that the curbing of wealth means dis- 
 tribution to the poor, and now she is aghast at 
 the number of the unemployed, and at the de- 
 crease in her export and import trade. Just why 
 capital should continue to offer itself upon the 
 altar of taxation indefinitely it is hard to see, 
 and yet without capital, and capital encouraged 
 and protected, there can be no employment 
 of labor, and no increasing commerce and 
 industry. 
 
 We have in America the largest aggregations of 
 wealth under one control in the world. We have 
 one man with more money than any man in 
 history has ever had. We have also a population 
 of nearly ninety millions, increasing of late years 
 at the rate of a million a year, and we cannot get 
 men enough in years of average prosperity to do 
 our work, and we pay the highest wages, and our 
 people live in the greatest average comfort. 
 There may be, and there has been undoubtedly, 
 misuse of wealth, but wealth qua wealth is a 
 
CONCLUSION 427 
 
 blessing to everybody. Because one strong man 
 commits murder no one would set out to legislate 
 so that no man shall be strong. Any legislation 
 looking toward the curbing of the competent and 
 the plundering of the thrifty can end in but one 
 way. 
 
 When one sees evidences of such intentions in 
 England it is quite within bounds to prophesy 
 evil days to come. England of all nations has 
 made her way in the world by giving her citizens, 
 and protecting her citizens in the largest liberty 
 compatible with fair play to all. When she 
 shows signs of hampering her strong men, of 
 curtailing their enterprise, and of withholding 
 part of the prizes they win, she is turning 
 her back on her whole history, and interfering 
 with the best and the unique qualities of her 
 people. 
 
 I know of not one but several English fortunes, 
 and there are no doubt many more, which have 
 been lodged in Switzerland, where there is no 
 taxation upon foreign securities. The books are 
 kept there, the control is there, and this is done 
 on the ground that taxation in England is be- 
 coming confiscatory. This means taking the 
 very blood out of the veins of the body politic. 
 At the same time the Prime Minister is announc- 
 ing officially, as a result of a recent unfortunate 
 
428 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 and leaky interview with the German Emperor, 
 that England proposes to maintain the two- 
 power standard of her fleet. The two-power 
 standard means, that her fighting force at sea is 
 to be kept equal to that of any two other powers 
 plus ten per cent. These are brave words, but it 
 is almost laughable to think what would happen 
 should America and Germany start to build ships 
 against her. England would be bankrupt in ten 
 years, her population would emigrate to Canada, 
 South Africa, Australia, and the United States, 
 and the lonely island would become a fourth- 
 rate power used principally as a play-ground by 
 Americans. 
 
 Though we Americans may not like the English, 
 we are of the same race, and at bottom I, and 
 most of my countrymen, would not like to see the 
 old man downed. There are several things that 
 may happen to divert destiny. Should England 
 go to war now with Germany she would probably 
 win and would badly damage her most serious 
 and most irritating rival, and give her shipping, 
 her industries, and her commerce a new lease 
 of life. Her premier securities, which, by the 
 way, have declined in value enormously in the 
 last ten years, would go up, and there would be 
 a wave of enterprise and revived hope through- 
 out the Empire. That may happen, and if it is 
 
CONCLUSION 429 
 
 to happen, the sooner the better for England. 
 The Germans since 1870 have taken the place of 
 the English as the boors of Europe, and there 
 would be few tears shed in any capital in Chris- 
 tendom were they chastened. 
 
 A political and commercial federation of this 
 great Empire is a second possibility, the result 
 of which would necessarily put England in a very 
 powerful position. Wheat, coal, iron-ore, cattle, 
 sugar, oil, all the sinews of national life, are there, 
 waiting to be organized for offence and defence, 
 while England still smiles superciliously upon her 
 colonies. Canada alone could feed her. Canada 
 alone has a wealth of lumber, coal, iron, lime- 
 stone and good harbors where ships could be 
 built, with all the materials for the complete 
 building almost within a stone's throw of the 
 docks. An Imperial Parliament, with the natu- 
 ral resources of the great Empire behind it, and 
 the revived energy of a splendid race behind 
 that, and the unhampered capital of the bank- 
 ers of the world behind that, and unimpaired 
 credit to boot, would solve the problem swiftly 
 enough. 
 
 Still another possibility of a renewal of the 
 national life lies in the Englishman's way of 
 working through shifty compromises, till he 
 reaches a practicable hypothesis to go upon. He 
 
430 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 may be doing that now. These things that we 
 are enumerating as symptoms of a mortal disease 
 may be merely the various phases of recovery. 
 England's agriculture was nearly taxed out of 
 existence by the number of her paupers in 
 the forties, but drastic methods saved her. She 
 has endured fire, and plague, and famine, and 
 escaped, and this may happen again. She has 
 two precious assets to help her. The one is the 
 independence of her best and most powerful 
 citizens, men who despise popularity for its own 
 sake — men like Cleveland, President Eliot, 
 Choate and Root in our own country — the very 
 mainstays of their country wherever they be. 
 There is nothing shifty or selfish about them, and 
 they dare tell the mob that the honey of the 
 demagogue is in reality poison. Such a man 
 was Lord Salisbury, such another is Grey, the 
 present Secretary of State, and there are many 
 more. When matters come to the worst, the 
 Saxon races have always been able to produce 
 their own saviors in this type of man. The 
 Cromwells and the Lincolns are not all dead 
 yet. 
 
 The English people, too, are not a chattering 
 race. He who has lived in Spain, in Italy, in 
 France, realizes that one of the chief differences 
 between those countries and the northern nations 
 
CONCLUSION 431 
 
 is that the people in the former live in the streets, 
 the people of the latter live in their houses. 
 Every barber's shop, cafe, and street corner in 
 Madrid, or in Florence, and even to some ex- 
 tent in Paris, is a loafing place, a debating club, 
 and a political and social meeting place. Men 
 do not think, they talk! London may be 
 gloomy, New York and Chicago deserted after 
 sunset, but Madrid, Rome, and Paris are 
 alive with swarming, gesticulating, chattering 
 thousands. The climate may have much to do 
 with this, but for the moment I have nothing to 
 say to that ; the fact remains. The doers and the 
 governors of the world to-day are not spending 
 their leisure chattering in the streets. One may 
 laugh at their moroseness, their dulness, their 
 heaviness; one may make epigrams to the effect 
 that we take our pleasures sadly, but somehow 
 we feel that after all the laugh is with us, for 
 though we may take our pleasures sadly, we have 
 taken a grim grip upon much the most and the 
 best of the world, and the sinewy Saxon hand 
 shows only slight signs of relaxing. 
 
 This independence of the few, and this silent 
 steadiness of the many, must be reckoned 
 with as the unknown quantities always in abey- 
 ance in England, and of enormous potential 
 force. 
 
432 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 I note these three contingencies, war, an Im- 
 perial Federation, and the steadiness of the 
 people and the independence of their governing 
 class, as likely, any one of them, to change the 
 present trend of things. The last is, of course, 
 the serious and valuable asset. For a thousand 
 years these people have held to the same general 
 lines of progress. Let the best govern, let the 
 rest alone, and give us a workable not a theoret- 
 ical lead over our fences. 
 
 They will see some day, one hopes, that the 
 present day doctrines we have described are not 
 suited to their race. If they were not so par- 
 ochial, if they did not so confidently believe, as 
 Doctor Johnson once said, and as some of their 
 statesmen have broadly hinted many times since, 
 that "all foreigners are mostly fools," they would 
 be much nearer a realization of this than they are 
 now. The ignorance of their masses, which is 
 complete, and even of their governors and gentle- 
 men, of the political and social and economic 
 methods of other countries is extraordinary. Of 
 what the very doctrines they are now tampering 
 with have done in France, in Germany, and even 
 in their own colonies, they are blandly oblivious. 
 They seem to be constitutionally unable to learn 
 anything from the blows other nations have 
 received, or are now receiving, they must be hit, 
 
CONCLUSION 433 
 
 and hit hard, before they awake to the fact that 
 there is any danger. That is one reason why it 
 is so diflficult to visualize to one's self what will 
 happen. They are being hit, and hit hard, just 
 now. One mailed fist is sometimes shaken per- 
 ilously near the British nose. What they will 
 do when once they are well awake to the situa- 
 tion, I for one decline to prophesy. Those who 
 have read these pages may perhaps be able to 
 come to a conclusion more satisfactory to them 
 than mine would be. 
 
 Whatever may be the outcome of the commer- 
 cial and industrial ferment which has brought to 
 the fore new problems, not only for England, but 
 for other nations, England has taught, and still 
 teaches, mankind the art of governing other 
 races, and has worked out along common-sense 
 lines the only feasible method of securing peace 
 and prosperity under a democratic form of gov- 
 ernment. Barring America, I should say that 
 the masses in England are still to-day, in spite 
 of much poverty, in spite of the suffering con- 
 tingent upon the re-adjustment of industrial 
 methods, the most contented, the least nervous 
 about the final outcome, and the most confident 
 in Europe. Personally I am deeply in debt to 
 the English for many delightful friendships, for 
 generous and unstinted hospitality, and for 
 
ri 
 
 434 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 teaching me much that I have tried in these pages 
 to pass on to my own countrymen. 
 
 " Were my heart as some men's are, thy errors would not move 
 
 me! 
 But thy faults I curious find, and speak because I love thee! 
 Patience is a thing divine: and far, I grant, above me! 
 
 Foes sometimes befriend us more, our blacker deeds objecting. 
 Than th' obsequious bosom guest, with false respect affecting. 
 Friendship is the Glass of Truth, our hidden stains detecting. 
 
 Hidden mischief to conceal in State or Love is treason!" 
 
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