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Chapter VII - TruthChapter VII - Truth
Chapter VII - Truth
The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart, which contrasts
with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of
sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of
clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with
earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the punctuality and precise
dealing which commerce creates, and you have the English truth and credit. The
government strictly performs its engagements. The subjects do not understand
trifling on its part. When any breach of promise occurred, in the old days of
prerogative, it was resented by the people as an intolerable grievance. And,
in modern times, any slipperiness in the government in political faith, or any
repudiation or crookedness in matters of finance, would bring the whole nation
to a committee of inquiry and reform. Private men keep their promises, never
so trivial. Down goes the flying word on the tablets, and is indelible as
Domesday Book.
Their practical power rests on their national sincerity. Veracity derives
from instinct, and marks superiority in organization. Nature has endowed some
animals with cunning, as a compensation for strength withheld; but it has
provoked the malice of all others, as if avengers of public wrong. In the
nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, her races are loyal to truth,
as truth is the foundation of the social state. Beasts that make no truce with
man, do not break faith with each other. `Tis said that the wolf, who makes a
cache of his prey, and brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on
digging, it is not found, is instantly and unresistingly torn in pieces.
English veracity seems to result on a sounder animal structure, as if they
could afford it. They are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of
promises, and they require plain-dealing of others. We will not have to do
with a man in a mask. Let us know the truth. Draw a straight line, hit whom
and where it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the nation makes the type of
their race, is called by his friend Asser, the truth-speaker; Alueredus
veridicus. Geoffrey of Monmouth says of King Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that
"above all things he hated a lie." The Northman Guttorm said to King Olaf, "It
is royal work to fulfil royal words." The mottoes of their families are
monitory proverbs, as, Fare fac, - Say, do, - of the Fairfaxes; Say and seal,
of the house of Fiennes; Vero nil verius, of the DeVeres. To be king of their
word, is their pride. When they unmask cant, they say, "The English of this
is," &c.; and to give the lie is the extreme insult. The phrase of the lowest
of the people is "honor-bright," and their vulgar praise, "His word is as
good as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation, and the cause is
damaged in the public opinion, on which any paltering can be fixed. Even Lord
Chesterfield, with his French breeding, when he came to define a gentleman,
declared that truth made his distinction: and nothing ever spoken by him would
find so hearty a suffrage from his nation. The Duke of Wellington, who had the
best right to say so, advises the French General Kellermann, that he may rely
on the parole of an English officer. The English, of all classes, value
themselves on this trait, as distinguishing them from the French, who, in the
popular belief, are more polite than true. An Englishman understates, avoids
the superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging that in the French
language one cannot speak without lying.
They love reality in wealth, power, hospitality, and do not easily learn
to make a show, and take the world as it goes. They are not fond of ornaments,
and if they wear them, they must be gems. They read gladly in old Fuller, that
a lady, in the reign of Elizabeth, "would have as patiently digested a lie, as
the wearing of false stones or pendants of counterfeit pearl." They have the
earthhunger, or preference for property in land, which is said to mark the
Teutonic nations. They build of stone: public and private buildings are
massive and durable. In comparing their ships` houses and public offices with
the American, it is commonly said that they spend a pound where we spend a
dollar. Plain rich clothes, plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout
their house and belongings, mark the English truth.
They confide in each other, - English believes in English. The French
feel the superiority of this probity. The Englishman is not springing a trap
for his admiration, but is honestly minding his business. The Frenchman is
vain. Madame de Stael says that the English irritated Napoleon, mainly,
because they have found out how to unite success with honesty. She was not
aware how wide an application her foreign readers would give to the remark.
Wellington discovered the ruin of Bonaparte`s affairs, by his own probity. He
augured ill of the empire, as soon as he saw that it was mendacious, and lived
by war. If war do not bring in its sequel new trade, better agriculture and
manufactures, but only games, fireworks and spectacles, - no prosperity could
support it; much less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of pocket,
like France. So he drudged for years on his military works at Lisbon, and from
this base at last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing in his
countrymen and their syllogisms above all the rhodomontade of Europe.
At a St. George`s festival, in Montreal, where I happened to be a guest,
since my return home, I observed that the chairman complimented his
compatriots, by saying, "they confided that wherever they met an Englishman,
they found a man who would speak the truth." And one cannot think this
festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23rd of April, wherever two
or three English are found, they meet to encourage each other in the
nationality of veracity.
In the power of saying rude truth, sometimes in the lion`s mouth, no men
surpass them. On the king`s birthday, when each bishop was expected to offer
the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with
a mark at the passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge;" and they
so honor stoutness in each other, that the king passed it over. They are
tenacious of their belief, and cannot easily change their opinions to suit the
hour. They are like ships with too much head on to come quickly about, nor
will prosperity or even adversity be allowed to shake their habitual view of
conduct. Whilst I was in London, M. Guizot arrived there on his escape from
Paris, in February 1848. Many private friends called on him. His name was
immediately proposed as an honorary member of the Athenaeum. M. Guizot was
blackballed. Certainly, they knew the distinction of his name. But the
Englishman is not fickle. He had really made up his mind, now for years as he
read his newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot; and the altered position of
the man as an illustrious exile, and a guest in the country, make no
difference to him, as they would instantly, to an American.
They require the same adherence, thorough conviction and reality in
public men. It is the want of character which makes the low reputation of the
Irish members. "See them," they said, "one hundred and twenty-seven all
voting like sheep, never proposing anything, and all but four voting the
income tax," - which was an ill-judged concession of the Government,
relieving Irish property from the burdens charged on English.
They have a horror of adventurers in or out of Parliament. The ruling
passion of Englishmen, in these days, is a terror of humbug. In the same
proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adherence to your own. They
like a man committed to his objects. They hate the French, as frivolous; they
hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Germans, as professors. In February,
1848, they said, Look, the French king and his party fell for want of a shot;
they had not conscience to shoot, so entirely was the pith and heart of
monarchy eaten out."
They attack their own politicians every day, on the same grounds, as
adventurers. They love stoutness in standing for your right, in declining
money or promotion that costs any concession. The barrister refuses the silk
gown of Queen`s Counsel, if his junior have it one day earlier. Lord
Collingwood would not accept his medal for victory on 14th February, 1797, if
he did not receive one for victory on 1st June, 1794; and the long withholden
medal was accorded. When Castlereagh dissuaded Lord Wellington from going to
the king`s levee, until the unpopular Cintra business had been explained, he
replied, "You furnish me a reason for going. I will go this, or I will never
go to a king`s levee." The radical mob at Oxford cried after the tory Lord
Eldon, "There`s old Eldon; cheer him; he never ratted." They have given the
parliamentary nickname of Trimmers to the timeservers, whom English character
does not love.^1
[Footnote 1: It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of solitary
virtue in the face of the honors lately paid in England to the Emperor Louis
Napoleon. I am sure that no Englishman whom I had the happiness to know
consented, when the aristocracy and the commons of London cringed like a
Neapolitan rabble, before a successful thief. But - how to resist one step,
though odious, in a linked series of state necessities? - Governments must
always learn too late, that the use of dishonest agents is as ruinous for
nations as for single men.]
They are very liable in their politics to extraordinary delusions, thus,
to believe what stands recorded in the gravest books, that the movement of 10
April, 1848, was urged or assisted by foreigners: which, to be sure, is
paralleled by the democratic whimsy in this country, which I have noticed to
be shared by men sane on other points, that the English are at the bottom of
the agitation of slavery in American politics: and then again to the French
popular legends on the subject of perfidious Albion. But suspicion will make
fools of nations as of citizens.
A slow temperament makes them less rapid and ready than other countrymen,
and has given occasion to the observation, that English wit comes afterwards,
- which the French denote as esprit d`escalier. This dulness makes their
attachment to home, and their adherence in all foreign countries to home
habits. The Englishman who visits Mount Etna, will carry his teakettle to the
top. The old Italian author of the "Relation of England" (in 1500) says, "I
have it on the best information, that, when the war is actually raging most
furiously, they will seek for good eating, and all their other comforts,
without thinking what harm might befall them." Then their eyes seem to be set
at the bottom of a tunnel, and they affirm the one small fact they know, with
the best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And, as their own belief
in guineas is perfect, they readily, on all occasions, apply the pecuniary
argument as final. Thus when the Rochester rappings began to be heard of in
England, a man deposited 100 pounds in a sealed box in the Dublin Bank, and
then advertised in the newspapers to all somnambulists, mesmerizers, and
others, that whoever could tell him the number of his note, should have the
money. He let it lie there six months, the newspapers now and then, at his
instance, stimulating the attention of the adepts; but none could ever tell
him; and he said, "Now let me never be bothered more with this proven lie." It
is told of a good Sir John, that he heard a case stated by counsel, and made
up his mind; then the counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak,
he found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he exclaimed, "So help me
God! I will never listen to evidence again." Any number of delightful examples
of this English stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe. I knew a very worthy
man, - a magistrate, I believe he was, in the town of Derby, - who went to the
opera, to see Malibran. In one scene, the heroine was to rush across a ruined
bridge. Mr. B. arose, and mildly yet firmly called the attention of the
audience and the performers to the fact that, in his judgment, the bridge was
unsafe! This English stolidity contrasts with French wit and tact. The French,
it is commonly said, have greatly more influence in Europe than the English.
What influence the English have is by brute force of wealth and power; that of
the French by affinity and talent. The Italian is subtle, the Spaniard
treacherous: tortures, it was said, could never wrest from an Egyptian the
confession of a secret. None of these traits belongs to the Englishman. His
choler and conceit force everything out. Defoe, who knew his countrymen well,
says of them,
"In close intrigue, their faculty`s but weak,
For generally whate`er they know, they speak,
And often their own counsels undermine
By mere infirmity without design;
From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed,
That English treasons never can succeed;
For they`re so open-hearted, you may know
Their own most secret thoughts, and others` too."
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