Liverpool, Wednesday, August 6, 1851.
I do not wholly like these cold and stately English, yet I think I am not blind to their many sterling qualities. The greatness of England, it is quite confidently asserted, is based upon her conquests and plunderings—on her immense Commerce and unlimited Foreign Possessions. I think otherwise. The English have qualities which would have rendered them wealthy and powerful though they had been located in the center of Asia instead of on the western coast of Europe. I do not say that these qualities could have been developed in Central Asia, but if they had been, they would have insured to their possessors a commanding position. Personally, the English do not attract nor shine; but collectively they are a race to make their mark on the destinies of mankind.
In the first place, they are eminently industrious. I have seen no country in which the proportion of idlers is smaller. I think American labor is more efficient, day to day or hour to hour, than British; but we have the larger proportion of non-producers—petty clerks in the small towns, men who live by their wits, loungers about barrooms, &c. There is here a small class of wealthy idlers (not embracing nearly all the wealthy, nor of the Aristocracy, by any means), and a more numerous class of idle paupers or criminals; but Work is the general rule, and the idlers constitute but a small proportion of the whole population. Great Britain is full of wealth, not entirely but mainly because her people are constantly producing. All that she has plundered in a century does not equal the new wealth produced by her people every year.
The English are eminently devotees of Method and Economy. I never saw the rule, "A place for everything, and everything in its place," so well observed as here. The reckless and the prodigal are found here as every where else, but they are marked exceptions. Nine-tenths of those who have a competence know what income they have, and are careful not to spend more. A Duchess will say to a mere acquaintance, "I cannot afford" a proposed outlay—an avowal rarely and reluctantly made by an American, even in moderate circumstances. She means simply that other demands upon her income are such as to forbid the contemplated expenditure, though she could of course afford this if she did not deem those of prior consequence. No Englishman is ashamed to be economical, nor to have it known that he is so. Whether his annual expenditure be fifty pounds or fifty thousand, he tries to get his money's worth. I have been admonished and instructed by the systematic economy which is practiced even in great houses. You never see a lighted candle set down carelessly and left to burn an hour or two to no purpose, as is so common with us; if you leave one burning, some one speedily comes and quietly extinguishes the flame. Said a friend: "You never see any paper in the streets here as you do in New-York [swept out of the stores, &c.] the English throw nothing away." We speak of the vast parks and lawns of the Aristocracy as so much land taken out of use and devoted to mere ostentation; but all that land is growing timber or furnishing pasturage—often both. The owner gratifies his taste or his pride by reserving it from cultivation, but he does not forget the main chance. So of his Fisheries and even Game-Preserves. Of course, there are noblemen who would scorn to sell their Venison or Partridges; but Game is abundant in the hotels and refectories—too much so for half of it to have been obtained by poaching. Few whose estates might yield them ten thousand a year are content with nine thousand.
The English are eminently a practical people. They have a living faith in the potency of the Horse-Guards, and in the maxim that "Safe bind is sure find." They have a sincere affection for roast beef. They are quite sure "the mob" will do no harm if it is vigilantly watched and thoroughly overawed. Their obstreperous loyalty might seem inconsistent with this unideal character, but it is only seeming. When the portly and well-to-do Briton vociferates "God save the Queen!" with intense enthusiasm, he means "God save my estates, my rents, my shares, my consols, my expectations." The fervor of an Englishman's loyalty is usually in a direct ratio with the extent of his material possessions. The poor like the Queen personally, and like to gaze at royal pageantry; but they are not fanatically loyal. One who has seen Gen. Jackson or Harry Clay publicly enter New-York or any other city finds it hard to realize that the acclamations accorded on like occasions to Queen Victoria can really be deemed enthusiastic.
Gravity is a prominent feature of the English character. A hundred Englishmen of any class, forgathered for any purpose of conference or recreation, will have less merriment in the course of their sitting than a score of Frenchmen or Americans would have in a similar time. Hence it is generally remarked that the English of almost any class show to least advantage when attempting to enjoy themselves. They are as awkward at a frolic as a bear at a dance. Their manner of expressing themselves is literal and prosaic; the American tendency to hyperbole and exaggeration grates harshly on their ears. They can only account for it by a presumption of ill breeding on the part of the utterer. Forward lads and "fast" people are scarce and uncurrent here. A Western "screamer," eager to fight or drink, to run horses or shoot for a wager, and boasting that he had "the prettiest sister, the likeliest wife and the ugliest dog in all Kentuck," would be no where else so out of place and incomprehensible as in this country, no matter in what circle of society.
The Women of England, of whatever rank, studiously avoid peculiarities of dress or manner and repress idiosyncrasies of character. No where else that I have ever been could so keen an observer as Pope have written:
"Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
Most women have no character at all."
Each essays to think, appear and speak as nearly according to the orthodox standard of Womanhood as possible. Hardly one who has any reputation to save could tolerate the idea of attending a Woman's Rights Convention or appearing in a Bloomer any more than that of standing on her head in the Haymarket or walking a tight-rope across the pit of Drury Lane. So far as I can judge, the ideas which underlie the Woman's Rights movement are not merely repugnant but utterly inconceivable to the great mass of English women, the last Westminster Review to the contrary notwithstanding.
I do not judge whether they are better or worse for this. Their conversation is certainly tamer and less piquant than that of the American or the French ladies. I think it evinces a less profound and varied culture than that of their German sisters; but none will deny them the possession of sterling and amiable qualities. Their physical development is unsurpassed, and for good reasons—their climate is mild and they take more exercise than our women do. Their fullness of bust is a topic of general admiration among the foreigners now so plentiful in England, and their complexions are marvelously fair and delicate. Except by a very few in Ireland, I have not seen them equaled. And, on the whole, I do not know that there are better mothers than the English, especially of the middle classes.