The Fact-Lovers
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the demand for hard evidence as a peculiarly English trait.
1856
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
By James Gillray (1756-1815), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
‘View of the Hustings in Covent Garden’, by James Gillray (1756-1815), caricaturing the Westminster hustings for the general election of November 1806. Two seats were up for grabs, and James Paull, shown standing to the right of the central post, was defeated by Sir Samuel Hood, conspicuous in his Admiral’s hat (‘Two faces under one Hood!’ cries a disgruntled voter) and by Treasurer of the Navy Richard Sheridan (‘Sherry and liberty!’, ‘Pay your debts, Mr Treasurer!’), the large man in brown. After losing, Paull questioned the result, and was reprimanded by the Commons for ‘false and scandalous’ allegations; he promptly challenged a fellow MP to a duel, which was stopped. Other VIPs shown here include William Cobbett, standing just behind Paull’s left and clutching his popular newspaper the ‘Political Register’.
Introduction
American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) believed that there was no people in Europe so committed to hard, scientific facts than the Victorian English, so unwilling to act until all the evidence is in – a ‘Victorian value’ worth rediscovering today.
THEY kiss the dust before a fact. Is it a machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it a candidate on the hustings – the universe of Englishmen will suspend their judgment until the trial can be had.
They are not to be led by a phrase, they want a working plan, a working machine, a working constitution, and will sit out the trial and abide by the issue and reject all preconceived theories. In politics they put blunt questions, which must be answered; Who is to pay the taxes? What will you do for trade? What for corn? What for the spinner?
This singular fairness and its results strike the French with surprise. Philip de Commines says, “Among all the sovereignties I know in the world, that in which the public good is best attended to, and the least violence exercised on the people, is that of England.”* Life is safe, and personal rights; and what is freedom without security?
From ‘English Traits’ (1856, 1876) by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).
Philip de Commines (1447-1511), a diplomat in the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and of King Louis IX of France. The passage occurs in his ‘Memoires’ Volume I, Book V, Chap. 19 (p. 444): “In my opinion, of all the countries in the world with which I was ever acquainted, the one where the government is best managed, where the rule is least violent on the people, where buildings are least likely to be destroyed and demolished by war, is England; and that fate and misfortune falls only upon those who make the war”. De Commines was being generous: England was at that time (1477) in the middle of The Wars of the Roses, and Edward IV had six years earlier snatched the throne back from Henry VI.
