In proposing the toast to the ladies at a City dinner, one evening, Lord Derby expressed himself in these terms:—

“Before appointing an Englishman to any post of importance, the first question the electors ask is:

“‘What kind of a wife has he?’”

And, indeed, the English, who introduce diplomacy into everything, place discretion above all the qualifications that an English candidate sends to the members of an electing board, in the form of testimonials.

The chief thing required of a man who is to be placed at the head of a Society, an Institution, a College, is that he should know how to maintain order and good discipline: not with fuss and severity, but with calmness and discretion; and the English are quite right, for self-control and discretion are the two qualities that most fit a man for government. “Now,” the electors say, “if Mr. So-and-So, who is one of our selected candidates, cannot keep his wife in order, how will he keep a thousand men or boys in order? If he cannot maintain good discipline in his house, how will he maintain it in our Society? If he is ruled by his wife, it is his wife and not he whom we shall be electing. Therefore Mr. So-and-So will not do for us.”

Very proper reasoning.

How many talented men could I name, who will owe to their wives, all their life-time, the honour of being and remaining obscure heroes!

What is the main cause of England’s greatness and prosperity? Simply this:

The thousands of small republics, all independent each of the other, that are called Societies, Hospitals, Colleges, etc., are governed, not by idols that have hands and handle not, or by badly salaried potentates who have eyes and see not, but by energetic and clear-sighted men, who receive immense salaries, but who, in return, devote to the Institutions that they rule over, all the resources, all the force of their minds.

Take the schools and colleges for instance.

I am convinced that, in Paris, a proviseur does not know the names of more than thirty or forty of the pupils attending his lycÉe. At any rate, there are not twenty of them that he could recognise in the street and call by their names. His emoluments range from five to six hundred pounds a year.

In England, the head-masters of the great Public Schools receive three, four, five, and even six thousand pounds a year. Well, I guarantee that these head-masters know individually every one of the thousand boys or so that are under their care. They know the place that each one occupies in his class. The pupils are placed by the head-master, according to their merit and aptitude, in such and such form, in such and such department. He will write to some parents, “Your son has no taste for classics. I will put him in our modern school to learn mathematics and science. I advise you to make an engineer of him, an officer,” etc.

In France, work is generally in inverse ratio to the emoluments.

In England, work is in proportion to the salary: responsible work, at all events.

Take the Church.

English bishops are fortunate mortals, who receive emoluments amounting to something like eight and ten thousand pounds a year. But, over here, a bishopric is no sinecure.

In France, the clergy of a diocese receive from their bishop orders which they obey blindly; they all teach the same dogma, and have no competition to keep up; but, in England, everybody reasons and argues: the young clergyman, fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, has his own way of interpreting the Scriptures, and the bishop is constantly called upon to pacify, to conciliate all his little clerical world who are for ever dogmatising, discussing, disputing, in the pulpit, in meetings, in the newspapers, and keep him on the alert all the year round. If a French priest shows signs of independence of thought, he is treated as a rebel, and his case is soon settled; public indifference to religious matters consigns him to swift oblivion, when he has succeeded in making a little noise, which happens very rarely; but, in England, the priest who holds original views is backed up by partisans who immediately take up his cause; at any moment, he may set up for a martyr and become a source of continual annoyance to his bishop.

Above all things, the man in office must avoid a scandal, what the English call in slang, a row. So he must be discreet, conciliating, and an accomplished diplomatist: such, I repeat, are the qualifications of any man occupying a high and responsible position in England.

Take the man of business, the City man. Everywhere you find the same activity, the same feverish, high pressure kind of life. Under these circumstances, the part that the English woman has to play is clear enough: to make her husband forget, in private life, the strain, the rebuffs, the deceptions, the snubs and kicks that he has to endure in public life; to prepare for him a retreat in the calm atmosphere of which he may refresh himself and acquire new strength; to do the honours of her house with that liberality, that generous hospitality, which are only met with among the English; in short, to be satisfied with a part which, when filled with that abnegation and devotion of which the women of all countries are capable, is no less beautiful for being a secondary one.

Now, dear reader, if you will once more do me the honour of accepting me as guide, we will visit together those beautiful girls a trifle too emancipated, those virtuous wives a little too much respected, those good mothers perhaps a little neglected; those women hospitable above all others, whose ingenious forethought for the smallest needs of life makes of a humble cottage a little palace of cleanliness, order, and comfort.

JOHN BULL’S WOMANKIND.