Year: 1868

An Unpleasant National Characteristic.


Since Swift wrote his inmitable satire on
the English nation under the title of GULL
ver's Travels nothing has appeared which can
so painfully wound the national vanity as
recent article in the London Spectator. The
following are few specimen extracts from
this remarkable document, which appear in
American newspapers in all the reve'ry of
italics:


doubt If a race ever existed among whom
pecunlary dishonesty was so general or so
deeply aHected the structure of society. We
consider ourselves virtuous ne ,ple the salt
OF the earth, and 1t is not too much to saw that
at this moment the basis of half our laws the
cause OF half or more than half our adminis-
trative weakness. the root of .hree-fourt of
our commercial difficulties is the well founded
belief that a middle class Englishman, if he
gets anything like chance, will thieve will
expend his brain, his time, and his energies in
able efforts to steal money which is not his.


Our municipal difficulty is jobbery that is
theft,-the practice every municipality is GER
tain, unless watched, to indulge in, of robbing
the citizens to enrich its own members or 9TH
er favored individuals. Even Parliament, even
the Cabinet, the flower, or supposed flower, of
Parliamentary life, is not beyond the same sus-
picion. We dare not let the Chiefs of Depart
ments act for themselves in q most important
junction, that of making the great contracts
choosing, in fact. the agents they think ablest,
because we are certain that they will thieve,
not indeed for themselves, but for their party


Look at our railway system. 1t is the great
est and most important business organization
ever devised by nation, and it is breaking
down under habitual theft.


The very dislike of theft, unless committed
Dy violence, seems to have died out of the ma
tional mind. If man stands on London
Bridge, selling brass rings for gold, tie police
ultimately, and as an extreme measure, make
him walk; but if he robs thousand widows
successfully by prospectus deliberately tram
ed to deceive, he goes at once into Parliament


There is not department in England in
whicl one-third of the expense might not be
saved If men could be assumed to be barely


law honest" or in which, ii we did assume it
the nation would not lose twice as much as it
does. There is not great shop in London
whose proprietor is not paying a third of his
gross aggregate of salaries to persons whose
real work is to prevent plunder-a plunder
now so dreaded from its universally, that i'm
mense brain has been exerted, and is being ex-
erted to prevent salesmen ever touching cash
at ALTO enable children to do that part of the
work, as they do in managing lotteries.


These extracts are taken almost at random,
and constitute pretty formidable Indictment
against the middle class Englishmen, whom
most writers of that race regard as the pride
and hope of Britain. But our author spares
not any intensity of expression that can rem
der this favorite class more contemplate or
more suspected. He says that the worst of
all is tina, no one can see any help for it. 1t
seems to be the general impression that the
island is gradually relapsing into that state
of barbarism and lawlessness in which it
was found when the Romans first crossed the
Channel. "If Claude Duval," says the Spec
tator, "were alive now, he would not be fool
enough to rob coaches. He would get up
tea company"