[Footnote a: See Appendix U.]

Such is not the case with the English. An Englishman calmly enjoys the
real or imaginary advantages which in his opinion his country possesses.
If he grants nothing to other nations, neither does he solicit anything
for his own. The censure of foreigners does not affect him, and their
praise hardly flatters him; his position with regard to the rest of the
world is one of disdainful and ignorant reserve: his pride requires no
sustenance, it nourishes itself. It is remarkable that two nations,
so recently sprung from the same stock, should be so opposite to one
another in their manner of feeling and conversing.

In aristocratic countries the great possess immense privileges, upon
which their pride rests, without seeking to rely upon the lesser
advantages which accrue to them. As these privileges came to them by
inheritance, they regard them in some sort as a portion of themselves,
or at least as a natural right inherent in their own persons. They
therefore entertain a calm sense of their superiority; they do not dream
of vaunting privileges which everyone perceives and no one contests,
and these things are not sufficiently new to them to be made topics
of conversation. They stand unmoved in their solitary greatness, well
assured that they are seen of all the world without any effort to show
themselves off, and that no one will attempt to drive them from that
position. When an aristocracy carries on the public affairs, its
national pride naturally assumes this reserved, indifferent, and haughty
form, which is imitated by all the other classes of the nation.

When, on the contrary, social conditions differ but little, the
slightest privileges are of some importance; as every man sees around
himself a million of people enjoying precisely similar or analogous
advantages, his pride becomes craving and jealous, he clings to mere
trifles, and doggedly defends them. In democracies, as the conditions of
life are very fluctuating, men have almost always recently acquired the
advantages which they possess; the consequence is that they feel extreme
pleasure in exhibiting them, to show others and convince themselves that
they really enjoy them. As at any instant these same advantages may be
lost, their possessors are constantly on the alert, and make a point
of showing that they still retain them. Men living in democracies love
their country just as they love themselves, and they transfer the habits
of