"::::I think it's unfair to accuse the Victorians of attempting to equate ""British"" with ""English"". Indeed, it was in the Victorian period that people first started to make a distinction between those terms, and ideas about Scottish, Irish, and Welsh nationalism began to emerge. One day, I suspect, the nations of the British Isles will all have their own self-government (as part of the EU). Perhaps then, no one will object to the perfectly innocent and descriptively all-encompassing word ""British"".  

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