and
almost without a struggle. There shall yet be an Ireland to which her
sons in distant lands may turn their eyes with a pride unmingled with
sadness; but alas! who can say how soon!

XLIV.

THE ENGLISH.

LIVERPOOL, Wednesday, August 6, 1851.

I do not wholly like these cold and stately English, yet I think I am
not blind to their many sterling qualities. The greatness of England, it
is quite confidently asserted, is based upon her conquests and
plunderings--on her immense Commerce and unlimited Foreign Possessions.
I think otherwise. The English have qualities which would have rendered
them wealthy and powerful though they had been located in the center of
Asia instead of on the western coast of Europe. I do not say that these
qualities could have been developed in Central Asia, but if they _had_
been, they would have insured to their possessors a commanding position.
Personally, the English do not attract nor shine; but collectively they
are a race to make their mark on the destinies of mankind.

In the first place, they are eminently _industrious_. I have seen no
country in which the proportion of idlers is smaller. I think American
labor is more efficient, day to day or hour to hour, than British; but
we have the larger proportion of non-producers--petty clerks in the
small towns, men who live by their wits, loungers about barrooms, &c.
There is here a small class of wealthy idlers (not embracing nearly
_all_ the wealthy, nor of the Aristocracy, by any means), and a more
numerous class of idle paupers or criminals; but Work is the general
rule, and the idlers constitute but a small proportion of the whole
population. Great Britain is full of wealth, not entirely but mainly
because her people are constantly producing. All that she has plundered
in a century does not equal the new wealth produced by her people every
year.

The English are eminently devotees of _Method_ and _Economy_. I never
saw the rule, "A place for everything, and everything in its place," so
well observed as here. The reckless and the prodigal are found here as
every where else, but they are marked exceptions. Nine-tenths of those
who have a competence know what income they have, and are careful not to
spend more. A Duchess will say to a mere acquaintance, "I cannot afford"
a proposed outlay--an avowal rarely and reluctantly made by an American,
even in moderate circumstances. She means simply that other demands upon
her inc