evident is that they are bound to affect the character of the whole people. Nowhere in the world has the struggle for existence been so fierce as in Great Britain; and it has been the mainspring of English energy. In the sixteenth century Meteren declared that Englishmen were as lazy as Spaniards.[1] They were, in fact, like the Spaniards of that time, ready for adventure, able to endure great hardships, unsurpassable explorers and privateers, but indisposed to the plodding industry for which Germans and Flemings were conspicuous. Two centuries later Holberg declared that the greatest examples of human indolence were to be found among the pauper class in England, and the best examples of well-applied toil among the English adventurers and merchants.[2] The praise, though Holberg uses the word "industry," is evidently directed to English enterprise. A greater thinker than Holberg, Kant, was peculiarly impressed by the factitious self-reliance and capricious originality of the English character;[3] and taking the general estimate of our nation in that century, we may say that it was a popular reflection of Kant's judgment, though commonly more favourable. The Englishman of old French novels is habitually an original, disregardful of the opinion of the world, ready to measure
- ↑ Quoted in Motley's United Netherlands, vol. i. p. 291. This is the criticism of a foreigner, but it is incidentally confirmed by the negative testimony of the Venetian Ambassador, Andrea Trevisano, of Nicander Nucius, of Borde, and of Lely, who agree in omitting all mention of industry as a feature in English character. It must be borne in mind that the ploughman was scarce in times like the sixteenth century, when most of the land was in pasture, and that we owe our manufactures to Flemish settlers. The two classes most distinguished for steady toil were, therefore, scantily represented.P
- ↑ Holberg's Betänkning over nogle Europäiske Nationer, S. 232.
- ↑ Kant's Anthropologie. Kant's estimate is distinctly an unfriendly one. He calls the English "a people of whim:" glances at their "brutal pride:" (stolze Grobheit] and suggests that English self-assertiveness is not natural, but the result of circumstances.
