e black man first assumes that all mankind is
black, and then accuses the rest of the artificial vice of painting
their faces red and yellow, or the hypocrisy of white-washing
themselves after the fashion of whited sepulchres. The particular case
of it now before us is that of the English misunderstanding of America;
and it is based, as in all these cases, on the English misunderstanding
of England.

For the truth is that England has suffered of late from not having
enough of the free shooting of Hannibal Chollop; from not understanding
enough that the libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood.
The prosperous Englishman will not admit this; but then the prosperous
Englishman will not admit that he has suffered from anything. That is
what he is suffering from. Until lately at least he refused to realise
that many of his modern habits had been bad habits, the worst of them
being contentment. For all the real virtue in contentment evaporates,
when the contentment is only satisfaction and the satisfaction is only
self-satisfaction. Now it is perfectly true that America and not England
has seen the most obvious and outrageous official denials of liberty.
But it is equally true that it has seen the most obvious flouting of
such official nonsense, far more obvious than any similar evasions in
England. And nobody who knows the subconscious violence of the American
character would ever be surprised if the weapons of Chollop began to be
used in that most lawful lawlessness. It is perfectly true that the
libation of freedom must sometimes be drunk in blood, and never more
(one would think) than when mad millionaires forbid it to be drunk in
beer. But America, as compared with England, is the country where one
can still fancy men obtaining the libation of beer by the libation of
blood. Vulgar plutocracy is almost omnipotent in both countries; but I
think there is now more kick of reaction against it in America than in
England. The Americans may go mad when they make laws; but they recover
their reason when they disobey them. I wish I could believe that there
was as much of that destructive repentance in England; as indeed there
certainly was when Cobbett wrote. It faded gradually like a dying fire
through the Victorian era; and it was one of the very few realities that
Dickens did not understand. But any one who does understand it will know
that the days of Cobbett saw the last lost fight for English democracy;
and tha