CHAPTER VII.
Agricultural and Pastoral Resources.
HEN the Emperor Napoleon I. wished to put a
taunt upon England, he called the English a nation of shop-keepers. But Napoleon was scarcely original. Many years before a great English writer had noticed the same thing, that Englishmen were a trading race. The inference, however, which Adam Smith drew, was the very opposite of that which was, presumably, the inference of Napoleon; for Adam Smith adds that the desire of obtaining markets for their produce had led the English to found the Atlantic Colonies and commence the conquest of India. And when Max O’Rell wishes to give a descriptive title to his last book, which contains his impressions of the British Colonies, he calls it “John Bull and Co.”
Well, let us accept this continental estimate of our national life and character. For the moment let us forget such names as Shakespeare and Milton, Bacon and Newton, Reynolds and Gainsborough. Without any obtrusive patriotism we can find some satisfaction even in this restricted view of our position in the commonwealth of nations. For the external trade of England— and by England is meant the United Kingdom—is far greater than that of its brilliant and wealthy continental neighbour, far greater, too, than that of its own great daughter state—
“The beacon-bright Republic, far-off sighted.”