CONTINENTAL JEALOUSY OF ENGLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR.")
Sin,—In a recent article, treating of possible combinations hostile to this country, you alluded to the remark of a Spaniard, "You English are too dam happy," as supplying the clue to Continental jealousy of Great Britain. And this reminds one of a remark of Baron Ompteda, a German officer in our service during the Peninsular War. Writing to a friend in 1807, he observed :—" One of the main reasons for the prevalent ill-humour is the immense contrast between the unshaken firmness of England and the abjection of its con- temporaries; it will be the more slandered and hated the more energy and greatness it develops." The truth of this was strikingly demonstrated during the closing years of the Peninsular War, and Mathews, the author of "The Diary of an Invalid," in seeking for an explanation of the extra- ordinary dislike manifested towards Englishmen at Lisbon in 1817, wrote :—" How is this to be explained ? Is it that malicious sentiment of envy which seems to have overspread the whole Continent, at the prodigious elevation to which England has arisen ? " The truth is, the more prosperous and happy Great Britain becomes, the more she is hated by her rivals. But it would be a strange way of gaining the love and respect of our dear rivals to hand them over our wealth and sit in sackcloth and ashes as advised by those "candid friends" who are for ever worrying themselves over the conundrum,—"Why is England disliked abroad?"—I am,
Sir, &c., HENRY N. SHORE. Mount Elton, Clevedon, August 14th.
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