Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1884 — ENGLISH SNOBBERY. [ARTICLE]

ENGLISH SNOBBERY.

How It Manifests Itself HlsajjfrerWliljr to American*. There is, however, in England, ns in every other country, a disposition to greatly exaggerate the advantage which the United States enjoy in possessing so much cheap land. I was told, only yesterday, that but for this we might be as backward as any country. To which I replied: “Do you really attribute your prosperity to land alone?” “Yes," was the answer. “How, then, is it that Russia, with so much productive so 1, is a land of miserably poor peasants?" “Ah! the Russians are a very different people from the Americans." “There,” I said, “at the very first question you change your argument from the land to the character of the inhabitants.” Adam Smith has shown that in fact the worst land in any country is generably the first settled. It is not understood here, or elsewhere in Europe, that the truest elements of prosperity in a country are freedom, equality, justice, and education. Add to this free exchanges without much extravagance, few paupers and very few immoderate fortunes, and we Bhonld have the chief elements of material prosperity. If we take, let us say, 1,000 men, and settle them anywhere, there may be found for every one his work. If they can produce more than they can consume of any fabric or material, Tetthem sell it to another community. But we introduce to this commerce a millionaire, a lord, or any person who will keep a large train of half idle servants, and establish extravagant standards of living and wants beyond the reach of the majority, we at once bring in that which results iu indolence, poverty and vic& An aristocracy did great good and little harm during the Middle Ages; now the conditions are exactly reversed.' The point was long since passed in America when this became generally understood. Here in England we are just getting to it. Half the world are still more than half convinced of the couplet: . I.et laws and learning or religion die. But, oh, preserve our old nobility! While the other half are beginning to believe that for every grain of independence and culture in the aristocrat there necessarily results ounces, if not pounds, of flunkeyism and degradation in his dependents and admirers. I have spoken of the rapidly-growing prosperity of England and the manifest improvement in the education and appearance of the lower classes. Just in proportion to this is the growing impatience at the prestige of mere rank and inherited wealth, and the anger that such beings as flunkies and servile followers and dependents should be regularly trained and made, so to speak, to disgrace the name of Englishman. Thackeray was the first to show what a m s an snob and slave an Englishman could become by being a servant and pai asite, and how the higher the lord was, the lower the lackey became. I believe that to his works more is due than to any other cause that the educated and more intelligent people of Great Britian have of late separated themselves to much from the titled classes and begun to speak so much less kindly of them. Twenty years ago people laughed at James’ yellow plush, and scorned the snow; now they are beginning to ask why they exist and what caused them? Once they would kill the snake to punish him for being one; now they would do it to prevent future snakes from coming.— Charles G. Leland, in New Orleans Tim es-Dem ocrat.