English rule

“ Once accepted as a subject of interest, every kind of reading, even to the most light and desultory which our copious literature affords, may be made to cast an illumination upon it. Thus, while mentioning the great leading facts of English Constitutional development—those more obvious stepping-stones upon which the race ascended in that difficult path—I have found it impossible to detail all the influences, whether of ancient or recent growth, which accompanied or produced the respective movements. ”

“ The national tastes of the English do not lead them to the life of the courtier, but to secure the comfort and independence of their homes. The aristocracy are marked by their predilection for country-life. ”

“ The freedom of England, which is the parent of its greatness in all ways, is as old in the race as fear of God and love of peril; and, through its manifold and primary operation in English nurture, is the true continuer of its literature. ”

“ If the great body of the literature of our language in which we delight, if the sources of our law and politics, if the great exploits of contemporary scholarship and science, are largely beyond our boundaries, yet are legitimately ours as well as all that we have ourselves achieved, why should we spurn any of our just and hereditary share in the great English traditions of civilization and freedom? ”

“ When the intelligence reached England, that the nation whose tongue was classic, whose statuary was regarded with despairing wonder, whose records formed one of the finest pages of history, was, after centuries of subjugation, striving to obtain freedom, a genuine enthusiasm pervaded English society. ”

“ The modern English character reflects the English Constitution in this, that it abounds in paradox; that it possesses every strength, but holds it tainted with every weakness; that it seems alternately both to rise above and to fall below the standard of average humanity ”

“ Nothing, I imagine, would strike the public men of England more singularly, than to find gentlemen of real information and much weight in the councils of this country expressing sentiments like these, in regard to the existing state of these English laws. ”

“ How wise are they who take advantage of the opening given by English laws and customs to rise above the every-day detail of mere society, and take their share in politics, literature, or great works of benevolence, which, if we add to them the learned professions, take in all the objects really worth attention. ”

“ The New English permit not their brethren of Old England to enjoy their consciences, lest their own numbers might exceed their own, or at least the greatness of their own assemblies and maintenances decrease. ”

“ The splendid traditions of our race and land, the noble institutions, the venerable order, the broad slow march from precedent to precedent that has made our English people great and this sunny island free—it is all an idle tale, told and done with. ”

“ For in our literature, which is but our voice as a people, the mind speaks, that has so laboured as to win for England, almost alone among the nations, the inheritance of an inalienable freedom.”—English Writers from Chaucer to Dunbar. ”

“ And I say that the English reliance on our religious organizations and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth,—mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a more complete, a harmonious perfection. ”

“ To the statesman, no doubt, the study of English history is of special importance, and he learns from it the genius of our constitution, and finds in it precedent, example, and warning peculiar to himself. But we all have an interest in the state, though it be not such as his, and we all find in that history precedent, and example, and warning. As every day adds to our knowledge of the past, it should add to our wisdom for the future ”

“ Dominating this American tradition is, dominating, almost tyrannical, for one reason only, but that a strong one, a fact not a convention, a factor, not a mere influence—dominating because of the English language. ”

“ Even the national temper was fully formed. Civilization, letters, science, religion itself, have done little to change the inner mood of Englishmen. That love of venture and of toil, of the sea and the fight, that trust in manhood and the might of man, that silent awe of the mysteries of life and death which lay deep in English souls then as now, passed with Englishmen to the land which Englishmen had won. ”

“ If you believe them, no other people but the English are born with a political understanding or forecast: why then should the English, who come here, not apply the same doctrines also to the Americans? and why should they not, occasionally, join our own fashionable people in depreciating the advantages of our government, and speak disrespectfully of those whom ourselves are accustomed to treat with so little ceremony? ”

“ The English 154principles of toleration, the English respect for personal liberty, the English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good, were making rapid progress. There is scarcely any thing in history so interesting as that great stirring up of the mind of France, that shaking of the foundations of all established opinions, that uprooting of old truth and old error. ”

“ Their traditional faith in compromise, their traditional dread of ideas, their traditional habit of acting first and reasoning afterwards, has made the English system a hopelessly confused bundle of semi-efficiency and semi-inefficiency—just as it has made the best English social type a gentleman, but a gentleman absolutely conditioned, tempered, and supplemented by a flunky. ”

“ A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as often, in the race of honor and influence. ”

“ How much more good would the English do by revising their own intricate laws, and improving the condition of their poor, than by troubling themselves and their distant friends with what does not concern them. ”

“ England and America should set an example to the world. The English-speaking people have reason enough and sense enough, I hope, to settle their differences by argument—by reason. Let us get the wild beast out of us. ”

“ In answer he bade them follow him while he showed how the conscience of a great nation had been struggling with its cupidity, and how conscience had conquered, so that by degrees the majesty of might became the majesty of right, till the English name was a watchword for those who strove to live righteously, and the English power was a refuge for the oppressed. ”

“ But sweeping measures have never found favour in England. There has ever been in English legislation, even when most reforming, that temperate spirit of equity which has refused to visit the sins of centuries upon a single generation. ”

“ As we look around among our leading men, our statesmen, our legislators, the judges on our bench, the commanders of our armies, the men to whom this English nation commits the conduct of its best interests, profane and sacred, what do we see to be the principles which guide our selection? ”

“ A hundred years ago there were pulpits that led the popular movement; while outside of religion and of what called itself literature, industry and a jealous sense of personal freedom obeyed, in their rapid growth, the law of their natures. English common sense and those municipal institutions born of the common law, and which had saved and sheltered it, grew inevitably too large for the eggshell of English dependence, and allowed it to drop off as naturally as the chick does when she is ready. ”

“ When we find bill, budget, committee, jury, lock-out, meeting, pamphlet, speech, strike, trade-union, ... on the Continent, and realize that the modern meanings of European words such as constitution, represent, vote, or of Old French words like address, majority, minority, motion, parliament, ... are derived from English, we feel ourselves in the presence, not so much of something peculiarly English as of something universal which England has been the means of bringing to earth. ”

“ It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the earliest monument of English freedom which we can see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands, the great Charter to which from age to age men have looked back as the groundwork of English liberty. ”

“ Every real improvement in the character of the English, whether it consist in giving them higher aspirations, or only a juster estimate of the value of their present objects of desire, must necessarily moderate the ardour of their devotion to the pursuit of wealth. ”

“ They are known to the English, a nation in which the progress of science, superiority in commerce, riches and power, its natural consequences, together with the numerous examples of virtue and courage, leave no doubt of the excellence of its laws. ”

“ With that outfit, such as it might be made in the time given to education which is within the reach of nine-tenths of the population--with that outfit, an Englishman, within the limits of English life, is fitted to go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions, to fill the highest offices of the State, and to become distinguished in practical pursuits, in science, or in art. ”

“ We are so very strong and stalwart, and earnest, and English, in a word, that we need in our diversions a number of restrictive check and kicking-straps, which the feebler and less pugnacious people of the Continent do not require. ”

“ The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion take, is the natural genius of the British mind. ”

“ Then they trust to some divine interposition, some accident, to put things to rights again. The success of the English is largely built up on such accidents—on the mistakes of other people. Providence has favoured them so far, on the whole ”

“ An Englishman might assert the right of England to determine all usages in respect to the English language, and the corresponding obligation of all English-speaking peoples to conform to an authoritative standard furnished by an academy in England. ”

“ But the intellectual organization of the English admits a communicableness of knowledge and ideas among them all. An electric touch by any of their national ideas, melts them into one family, and brings the hoards of power which their individuality is always hiving, into use and play for all. ”

“ They are extremely instructive for the internal relations of English society. They show wide observation and calm wisdom, and, like his philosophical works, are a treasure for the English nation, whose views of life have been built upon them. ”

“ The stress is laid upon the development of the English government, which is the most important feature to be emphasized in the study of English history. The connection between English institutions and those of New England is brought out in one of the problems. ”

“ Do you think that your thorough knowledge of English history, your acquaintance with the working of the Poor Laws, your grasp of the progress of European Art, and your general familiarity with all the great political, commercial, engineering, economic and other problems of the hour are such as to warrant you in facing the coming ordeal with a jaunty confidence? ”

“ English standards are as exacting, English judgments as strict, as ever they were; but to those who measure up to them, whatever their race or previous history, generous appreciation is given. And I know of no land where the reformer, the scientist, the philosopher—the man with a message of any kind—is granted fairer hearing or more just reward; always provided his wares are trade-marked genuine. ”

“ Those in power were not afraid, in addressing the English republicans and advocates of equality, to talk of the absolute power of the sovereign, and of the comparative insignificance of Parliament and the representatives of the people. ”

“ By adhering to our own practice, we preserve a superiority over the English, in those instances, in which ours is guided by rules; and so far ought we to be from conforming to their practice, that they ought rather to conform to ours. ”

“ But the people concerned were such as made certain their maintenance of a noble principle, even from bad motives. The stocks from which they sprang were among the most vigorous of the English race. The lives which most of them lived made them hard and self-reliant. ”

“ The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude, the punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates, and you have the English truth and credit. The government strictly performs its engagements. ”

“ For the good that we can do.
[5]
Find here not one ill word for brave old England; my first, best friends were English. But for her policy, her politicians, her speculators, what man with a heart in him can but hate and abhor them? ”

“ But the young man should subject himself to a systematic course of training; and I know of nothing more valuable in political studies than a thorough acquaintance with English history. Our principles of government were derived from England; and it is in the history of the mother country that the best discussion of principles is found, as in that country many of the contests for liberty occurred. ”

“ If anybody picks his pocket, or encroaches upon his land, or infringes his patent rights, or diverts his water-courses, the Englishman knows exactly what to do. There is the law. They keep it on tap in great build [Pg 164] ings called courts, and persons in wigs serve out to you precisely what you may deserve with great gusto and solemnity. ”