BULWER AXD HIS BOOK. 377 



If it shows any thing, it shows that Mr. Bulwer cannot take a joke, 

 which, we doubt not, agitated the midriff of the more jocular boots 

 with titillating vibrations. 



Mr, Bulwer, then, infers from this anecdote, that we are rather a 

 selfish than an independent people ; but as, when such a man as he 

 condescends to write about English character, it is well to know what 

 his opinions are (we use the word in the plural number advisedly, 

 for he has two opinions upon that point) we shall place in juxta 

 position several sentences that will, perhaps, enlighten us either as to 

 the English character, or to Mr. Bulwer's competency to judge of it. 

 Mr. Bulwer, be it remembered, has previously stated his belief that 

 the English are quite as selfish as they are independent. But 



" The English are an eminently generous people. I do not mean gene- 

 rous in the vulgar sense of the epithet, though that they would deserve, if 

 but from the ostentatious and artificial spirit I have already described ; but 

 the loftier and more moral one. Their sympathies are generous ; they feel 

 for the persecuted, and their love is for the fallen ! !" 



" Poverty, crime itself, does not blunt this noble characteristic. In 

 some of the workhouses the overseers devised a method to punish the re- 

 fractory paupers by taking away from them the comforts, permitted to the 

 rest ; the rest out of their own slender pittance supplied their companions ! 

 In his work upon prisons, Mr. Buxton informs us, that in the jail at Bristo 

 the allowance of bread to criminals was below the ordinary modicum neces- 

 sary for subsistence; to the debtor, however, no allowance was made, their 

 friends, or the charity of strangers supported them : there have been times 

 when their resources have failed, and some of the debtors would have lite- 

 rally perished for want, but that they were delivered how ? By the gene- 

 rosity of the criminals, who voluntary shared with them at once the food 

 and the distress." 



" In other countries poverty is a misfortune, with us it is a crime." 



" Our extreme regard for the chaste, induces a contemptuous apathy to the 

 ttnehaste. We care not how many these are, what they suffer, or how far they 

 descend into the lowest abysses of crime. Thus, in many of the agricultural 

 districts, nothing can equal the shameless abandonment of the female pea- 

 santry. Laws favouring bastardy, promote licentiousness, and as I have 

 before shewn, the pauper marries the mother of illegitimate children, in order 

 to have a betier claim on the parish. In our large towns, an equallyjsystem- 

 tical contempt of the unfortunate victims less perhaps of sin than of poverty, 

 produces consequences equally prejudicial. No regard as in other countries, 

 by a rigid police order, is paid to their health or condition ; the average of 

 their career on earth is limited to four years." 



" Thus, then, generosity is the character of the nation ; but the character 

 rather of the people than the nobles ; and while a certain school of theorists 

 maintain that the chief good of an aristocracy is to foster that noble quality, 

 they advance an argument which is so easily refuted as to endanger the 

 cause it would support." 



Having thus heard Mr. Bulwer on our generosity, let us listen to 

 his opinion of our honesty and morality. 



" But, if the commercial spirit makes us attach undue importance to 

 wealth, it keeps alive also a spirit of honesty as to the best means to acquire 

 it. Thus the same causes that produce our defects, conspire to produce 

 many of our merits. The effect of commerce is to make men trust- worthy 

 in their ordinary dealings, and their social relations. It does this, not by the 



M.M. No. 94 3 C 



