“Before appointing an Englishman to any post of importance, the first question the electors ask is:
“‘What kind of a wife has he?’”
And, indeed, the English, who introduce diplomacy into everything, place discretion above all the qualifications that an English candidate sends to the members of an electing board, in the form of testimonials.
The chief thing required of a man who is to be placed at the head of a Society, an Institution, a College, is that he should know how to maintain order and good discipline: not with fuss and severity, but with calmness and discretion; and the English are quite right, for self-control and discretion are the two qualities that most fit a man for government. “Now,” the electors say, “if Mr. So-and-So, who is one of our selected candidates, cannot keep his wife in order, how will he keep a thousand men or boys in order? If he cannot maintain good discipline in his house, how will he maintain it in our Society? If he is ruled by his wife, it is his wife and not he whom we shall be electing. Therefore Mr. So-and-So will not do for us.”
Very proper reasoning.
How many talented men could I name, who will owe to their wives, all their life-time, the honour of being and remaining obscure heroes!
What is the main cause of England’s greatness and prosperity? Simply this:
The thousands of small republics, all independent each of the other, that are called Societies, Hospitals, Colleges, etc., are governed, not by idols that have hands and handle not, or by badly salaried potentates who have eyes and see not, but by energetic and clear-sighted men, who receive immense salaries, but who, in return, devote to the Institutions that they rule over, all the resources, all the force of their minds.
Take the schools and colleges for instance.
I am convinced that, in Paris, a proviseur does not know the names of more than thirty or forty of the pupils attending his lycée. At any rate, there are not twenty of them that he could recognise in the street and call by their names. His emoluments range from five to six hundred pounds a year.