DR. CREIGHTON ON ENGLISH CHARACTER. AV E wish the Bishop of
Peterborough, in the most interesting lecture which he delivered at Oxford on Wednesday, on the English national character, had dwelt at greater length upon the second part of his sub- ject. It is not difficult to make too much of the English " insularity" upon which the learned Bishop at first in- sisted so strongly. We are insular no doubt, sometimes insular to absurdity, but so also are all the greater nations. The French have long ago been described as the " Chinese of Europe," and though they have taken representative institutions from us they are not sure yet that they like them, and will probably mould them in the end into something more distinctively French. They rejected the German Reformation, and they show every sign of a dis- position to reject all the European forms of Christianity. The Germans hate interference from outside quite as much as we do, and though they have adopted our idea of Parliaments, cling at least as strongly to their own idea of suffering their hereditary leaders in battle to rule in civil affairs also. The whole genius of Russia is in- tensely and even consciously insular, loving a separate civilisation, a separate political organisation, even a separate variety of Christianity, as strongly at least as any Englishman has ever done. Every nation, in fact, which is strong enough to resist external pressure, with the unique and startling exception of Japan, is insular ; that is, it resists pressure, mental or mora], from outside, and either does not absorb foreign ideas at all, or, absorb- ing, transmutes them till they are barely recognisable. We should say, indeed, that insularity was one of the tests by which a people proved its possession of a character strong enough to survive the great misfortunes which occasionally overtake all nations. Like a strong individual, a strong nation makes its own character, and if it receives im- pressions from outside, receives them as raw material, and works them up to suit its own taste in its own machine. The English are supposed to do that specially, partly because they live in an island, partly because they are very proud of doing it, and partly because of the foible on which the Bishop remarks, their habit of lecturing everybody else ; but except their consciousness of their own insularity, there is nothing special about it.
The intellectual specialty of the English, as we should contend, and as we understand the Bishop of Peter- borough in the second part of his lecture also to maintain, is their impatience of abstract ideas, their inability to believe that because an idea is sound they are therefore bound, even when it is inconvenient, to push it to its logical results. They insist on self-government, but are quite content to tolerate Monarchy and aristocracy. They hold to religious liberty as a dogma, but tax all landlords indifferently to support an Established Church. They believe in the equality of citizens, and tolerate the most astounding differences in the amount of voting- power which is assigned to each, so that a Londoner has scarcely a third of the power to influence laws possessed by an Orcadian or man of Kilkenny. They swear by the franchise as the sheet-anchor of liberty, but do not fret, if they get liberty, because the franchise is a restricted one. Every man with us is in the national ideal "free to say the thing he will," but when he has said it he comes under very strict laws indeed, intended to provide that what is said shall not be libellous, or blasphemous, or improper. Colonel Ingersoll, the American apostle of Disbelief, would on this side of the water have passed half his life in prison. As the Bishop well ex- presses it, we " cautiously adjust general ideas to the facts of national life," and when we think ourselves insufficiently defended establish " Volunteers," but not the conscription. We say and believe that taxation without representation is tyranny, and tax about a sixth of mankind without their own active consent just because we see clearly that it is good for them to be taxed. If we perceive an abuse we make just sufficient change to get rid of it, not caring in the least, for example, that the Monarch possesses a legal veto, but only making it impossible that a Minister should on any occasion advise the Monarch to exercise his legal power. Powers, in fact, do not frighten us at all, and we never withdraw them until they are misused. It would drive a Frenchman frantic to think that an Archbishop of Canterbury could, merely as Archbishop, make doctors of medicine at dis- cretion ; but as the Archbishops never misuse that very funny prerogative the Englishman does not care.
This temper of course produces conservatism of a kind, a conservatism, however, consistent with great boldness in experiment. The Englishman gropes his way very cautiously, sometimes even timidly, but if his object is far off he will go on steadily for very long distances. He wanted in 1688 to put Parliament above the Throne once for all, and so, though he refused to modify the preroga- tive, and would not even hear of a Republic, he in the most commonplace way, as if he were modifying copyhold tenure, just invented a legal fiction, and —changed the dynasty. He would not for worlds declare that women ought to have all the legal free- dom of men ; but the other day it occurred to him that it was " a great shame " that marriage should dis- possess women of their property, so almost in silence, without the slightest idea of doing anything dramatic, he made women, as regards property, the equals of men,— perhaps the greatest social revolution ever carried without a fight. Yet he will not admit women to all the pro- fessions, or allow them to claim University degrees, but opens one door after another when passage is strongly asked for, and allows the women to obtain the " equivalent of degrees,"—that is, allows them intellectual rank without the power of governing Universities, which might be inconvenient. As regards property, the end could not be reached without a big change, so he made the big change ; but as regards the professions the end can, he thinks, be reached by piecemeal reforms, so he doles out rights by the cup. He has, in fact, none of the discontent with intellectual imperfectness which marks the French- man, but just remedies the concrete abuse, leaving the abstract wrong to sulk if it likes in the corner, where it is in nobody's way. The truth is he considers that the one test of an institution, or a law, or a line of action is result, and if he approves the result, is perfectly contented. So fixed is this idea in his mind that he even applies it to creeds, and considers Macaulay perfectly sensible when he exhibits, as proof positive that Protestantism is more right than Catholicism, the fact that a Protestant canton in Switzerland is usually more prosperous than a Catholic one. How can there be better evidence, says the English- man, though he hears every week of places where the wicked flourish like the green bay-tree.
We wish very much that the Bishop of Peterborough, with his unsurpassed knowledge of English history and his obvious interest in the recesses of the English character, would tell us what he thinks have been and are the usual English ends. He seems to say all through his lecture that the principal end of an Englishman is, not to be interfered with ; but is that quite true as regards the nation ? We are not quite sure. The people, no doubt, invented the phrase, " An Englishman's house is his castle," they have never borne for long a disciplinary Church, and they have always appeared intolerant of police super- vision, while they reject with anger that claim of "the family" to interfere with the individual which is the very basis and buttress of the Continental systems of social life. All the same the English bore for years the most interfering system of taxation ever devised—nobody under sixty now knows what the old laws of taxation were or their pressure on general life—they submit to the most abominable interference from their Trade-Unions, and they are betraying, as power passes to lower and lower strata of the people, a perfect passion for the " inspection" and " supervision," that is, interference, which on the Continent they denounce. They like to be independent, we allow, but there are sharp and sometimes narrow limits to that desire, which indeed they give up whenever they feel that they want protection. We should say ourselves, if we were compelled to define the essence of the English character in a phrase, that they " wanted to be comfortable with a clear conscience "—the reason why they have invented their queer secondary creed, respectability. The phrase, however, though it explains much, and will, indeed, account for the usual conduct of the majority, does not quite cover the whole ground. There is a liability in the English, considered as a vast crowd or grand corporation, to sudden bursts of emotion, to spasms, as it were, of fury or affection or pity, or even greed—it is Macaulay who makes this last remark, but we have all seen it ourselves as regards South Africa– which nothing in the Bishop's lecture explains, and which seems at first sight inconsistent with the whole drift of the national character. The essence of that character is moderation, and these outbursts have always in them a trace of immoderateness, the foible not of the Saxon but the Slay. We have never seen a good explanation of this, and cannot think out one which gives us intellectual con- tent. The most probable theory is that it is a survival of the old fierceness which originally gave the " Engle " his victory among kindred tribes, but though that theory sounds scientific, it does not really explain much. All we can say is that there is an explosive vein in the strata of the national character which whoever for- gets—and we cannot remember a Continental observer who has not forgotten it—gives certainly a false impres- sion of our history, and probably a false impression of our future. The cool and merciful English when they are white-lipped are apt to be very dangerous—vide any telegram at any hour from Bulawayo—and when they are nearly crying with pity the grave English, who only do what has to be done, are apt to be almost silly. Dr. Creighton, we have no doubt, has been present at a revival meeting, and we should like to know how the English character as there displayed strikes the historic mind. Moderation is not the distinctive feature of that kind of scene any more than sweet reasonableness.
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