A Masterly Inactivity

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Title:     A Masterly Inactivity
Author: Charles Lever [More Titles by Lever]

It is no small privilege to you "gentlemen of England who live at home at ease," or otherwise, that you cannot hear how the whole Continent is talking of you at this moment. We have, as a nation, no small share of self-sufficiency and self-esteem. If we do not thank God for it, we are right well pleased to know that we are not like that Publican there, "who eats garlic, or carries a stiletto, or knouts his servants, or indulges in any other taste or pastime of 'the confounded foreigner.'" The 'Times' proclaims how infinitely superior we are every morning; and each traveller--John Murray in hand--expounds in his bad French, that an Englishman is the only European native brought up in the knowledge of truth and the wash-tub.

By dint of time, iteration, and a considerable amount of that same French I speak of, an article expressly manufactured for exportation, we really did at last persuade patient and suffering Europe to take us at our own valuation. We got them to believe that--with certain little peculiarities, certain lesser vices, rather amiable than otherwise--no nation, ancient or modern, could approach us. That we were at one and the same time the richest, the strongest, the most honourable, the most courageous people recorded in history; and not alone this, but the politest and the most conciliatory, with the largest coal-fields and the best cookery in Europe. Now, there is nothing more damaging than the witness who proves too much. Miss Edgeworth tells us somewhere, I think, of an Irish peer who, travelling in France with a negro servant, directed him, if questioned on the subject, always to say his master was a Frenchman. He was punctiliously faithful to his orders; but whenever he said, "My massa a Frenchman," he always added, "So am I."

In the same spirit has Bull gone and damaged himself abroad. He might have enjoyed an unlimited credit for his stories of English wealth and greatness--how big was our fleet, and how bitter our beer; he might have rung the changes over our just pride in our insular position and our income-tax, and none dared to dispute him; but when, in the warm expansiveness of his enthusiasm, he proceeded to say, not merely that we dressed better and dined better than the foreigner, but that our manners were more polished, our address more insinuating, and the amiability of our whole social tone more conspicuous, "Mossoo," taking him to represent all from Stockholm to Sicily, began to examine for himself, and after some hesitation to ask, "What if the wealth be only like the politeness? What if the national character be about as rude as the cookery? What if English morality turn out to be a jumble and confusion, very like English-French? Who is to tell us that the coal-fields may not be as easily exhausted as the civility?" These were very ugly doubts, and for some years back foreigners, after that slow fashion in which public opinion moves amongst them, have been turning them over and over, but in a manner that showed a great revulsion had taken place on the Continent with regard to the estimate of England.

A nation usually judges another nation by the individuals and by the Government. Now it is no calumny to say that, taking them _en masse_, the English who travel abroad, whether it be from indifference, from indolence, from a rooted confidence in their own superiority, or from some defect in character, neither win favour for themselves, nor affection for their country from foreigners. So long as we were looked upon, however, as colossal in wealth and power, a certain rude and abrupt demeanour was taken as the type of a people too practical to be polished. It grew to be thought that intense activity and untiring energy had no time to bestow on mere forms. When, however, a suspicion began to get abroad--it was a cloud no bigger at first than a man's hand--that if we had the money it was to hoard it, and if we had the power it was to withhold its exercise; that we wanted, in fact, to impose on the world by the menace of a force we never meant to employ, and to rule Europe as great financiers "bear" the Stock Exchange--then, and then for the first time, there arose that cry against England as a sham and an imposition, of which, as I said before, it is very pleasant for you at home if the sounds have not reached you.

All our late policy has led to this. Ever ready to join with France, we always leave her in the lurch. We went with her to Mexico, and left her when she landed. We did our utmost to launch her into a war for Poland, in which we had never the slightest intention of joining. Always prompt for the initiative, we stop short immediately after. I have a friend who says, "I am very fond of going to church, but I don't like going in." This is exactly the case of England. She won't go in.

Now, I am fully persuaded it would have been a mistake to have joined in the Mexican campaign. I cannot imagine such a congeries of blunders as a war for the Poles. But why entertain these questions? Why discuss them in cabinets, and debate them in councils? Why convey the false impression that you are indignant when you are indifferent, or feel sympathy for sufferings of which you will do nothing but talk?

"Masterly inactivity" was as unlucky a phrase as ever was coined. It has led small statesmanship into innumerable blunders, and made second-rate politicians fancy that whenever they folded their arms they were dignified. To obtain the credit for a masterly inactivity, it is first of all essential you should show that you could do something very great if you would. There would be no credit in a man born deaf and dumb having observed a discreet silence. To give England, therefore, the prestige for this high quality, it was necessary that she should seem to bestir herself. The British lion must have got up, rolled his eyes fearfully, and even lashed his tail, before he resolved on the masterly inactivity of lying down again.

In Knickerbocker's 'History of New York' we have a very graphic description of the ship in which the first Dutch explorers sailed for the shores of North America. "The vessel was called the _Goede Vrouw_ (Good Woman), a compliment to the wife of the President of the West India Company, who was allowed by every one, except her husband, to be a sweet-tempered lady--when not in liquor. It was, in truth, a gallant vessel of the most approved Dutch construction--made by the ablest ship-carpenters of Amsterdam, who, as is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their countrywomen. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the keel, one hundred feet in the beam, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrel. Like the beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle of Amsterdam, it was full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper-bottom, and withal a prodigious poop."

It is, however, with her sailing qualities we are more interested than with her build. "Thus she made as much lee-way as head-way--could get along nearly as fast with the wind ahead as at poop, and was particularly great in a calm." Would not one say, in reading this description, that the humorist was giving prophetically a picture of the England of the present day, making as much lee-way as head-way, none the better, wherever the winds came from, and only great in a calm? The very last touch he gives is exquisite. "Thus gallantly furnished, she floated out of harbour sideways, like a majestic goose." Can anything be more perfect; can anything more neatly typify the course the vessel of the State is taking, "floating out sideways, like a majestic goose!" amidst the jeers and mockeries of beholding Europe.

Our whole policy consists in putting forward some hypothetical case, in which, if certain other states were to do something which would cause another country to do something else, then England would be found in that case---- God forgive me!

I was going to quote some of that balderdash which reminds one of 'The Rivals,' where Acres says, "If you had called me a poltroon, Sir Lucas!"

"Well, sir, and if I had?"

"In that case I should have thought you a very ill-bred man."

See what it is to have a literary Foreign Secretary; see how he goes back to our great writers, not alone for his style, but his statesmanship. We have been insulted, mocked, and sneered at; our national honour derided, our national strength defied; but we are told it is all right: our policy is a "masterly inactivity," and the Funds are at ninety-one and one-eighth!

The 'Times.' too, is of the same cheery and encouraging spirit, and philosophically looks on the misfortunes of our friends pretty much as friends' misfortunes are usually regarded in life--occasions for a tender pity, and a hopeful trust in Providence. Let them--the writer speaks of the Allied armies--let them go on in the career of rapine and cruelty; let them ravage the Duchies and dismember Denmark; but a time will come when the terrible example of unlawful aggression shall be retorted upon themselves, and the sorrows of Schleswig be expiated on the soil of the Fatherland.

"They are going to hang Larry," cried the wife of a condemned felon to the lawyer, who had hurried into court, having totally forgotten he had ever engaged to defend the prisoner.

"Let them hang him, and I'll make it the dearest hanging ever they hanged."

These may be words of comfort in Downing Street. I wonder what the Danes think of them?

[The end]
Charles Lever's essay: Masterly Inactivity

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