LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
" ENGLAND " INSTEAD OF "BRITAIN." [To TER EDITOR OP TRZ SPZOTATOU."1 have always understood that the Spectator prides itself not only on the purity of the English but on the accuracy of the expressions employed in its columns. My surprise, therefore, was great when I found last Saturday at the beginning of its most prominent paragraph the following sentence :—" When our last issue was published it seemed humanly certain that this week we should chronicle the most gorgeous pageant of modern times, and record how yet once more in English history the successor of Augustine bad presented to the people of England, and the people of England, as represented by the notables assembled in the Abbey, had acclaimed, 'the undoubted King of this realm.'" Surely if a calamity had not rendered it impossible, the presentation would have been made to a wider circle than the "people of England," and it is surely a terribly narrow view to take of the subject that the notables assembled represent only the "people of England." I think without exception the note struck by every other paper has been the Imperial and world- wide character of the gathering so lamentably prevented from taking place, and my regard for the Spectator has received a painful shock. We who come from the northern part of the island regard with a sort of contemptuous amusement the ordinary colloquial use of the term "England" to connote Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or the "Realm," as the case may be ; but recognising the difficulty of finding a suitable word for colloquial use, we mostly let it pass in silence. As an individual I at any rate.know that its use arises much more from thoughtlessness than the arrogance to which many of my Scottish fellow-countrymen attribute it. Not long ago a dis- tinguished dignitary of the Church of England, expatiating to
a Scotsman, an intimate friend of my own, on the excellence of his holiday, concluded by saying that he had spent the last ten days of it in Edinburgh, "which I always consider the most beautiful city in England." This certainly is an instance of thoughtlessness rather than anything else, for the good man intended to be not only civil but laudatory. I do not wish to carry the matter too far, or to be in any sense unreasonable, but surely on consideration you will acknowledge that the phrase I have quoted is on such an occasion and in such a place so incorrect and so Unfair as to come under the description of blunders which are worse than crimes.—I am, [Lord Balfour of Burleigh is, of course, perfectly right. We can only express our regret at our use of "England" for "Britain." The word " Britain " is, unfortunately, neither so euphonious nor so attractive by association as "England," and so one is apt to fall into using it when it is not the right word. We wish "the English" could be held to mean "the English- speaking race," and so be used for "the British," though that, again, is ambiguous. "The people of the British Empire" is, of course, the correct description, but it must be admitted to be somewhat cumbrous. It is surely not necessary to say that there was no particularist intention behind our words.—En. Spectator.]
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