was so before the burning question of Home Rule directed attention to Irish affairs. This ignorance is not attributable to dulness. It has but one cause, the pride of national pre-eminence, the pride of being the first amongst the English-speaking nations of the world. [Sidenote: The Habit of despising.] [Sidenote: The English a Contemptuous People.] [Sidenote: The English underrate other Nations.] [Sidenote: English do not overrate Themselves.] Patriotic pride derives constantly renewed strength from a certain mental habit, which may grow upon a nation as it frequently does upon an individual. A man may get into the habit of despising, he may get into the habit of rating what others possess and what others do at an estimate below the truth. It is an indirect way of exalting without over-estimating himself, and therefore is pleasing to natures that are neither boastful nor vain, yet are firmly tenacious of pre-eminence. Now, although the English are said to be a deferential people, and have, no doubt, the habit of deference for certain distinctions, they are at the same time an eminently contemptuous people, even within the limits of their own island. Their habit of contempt is tranquil, it is without vaunt and without vanity, but it is almost constant, and they dwell with difficulty in that middle or neutral state which neither reverences nor despises. Consequently, when there is not some very special reason for feeling deference towards a foreigner, the Englishman is likely to despise him. The same mental habit causes the English, as a nation, to underrate habitually the strength and intelligence of other nations, without much overrating their own. The common Englishman thinks nothing of the French navy, hardly believes that the French can build or manage a ship of war, although the French navy is, in reality, the second in the world, and a good second; but the English do not overrate their own navy, on the contrary, they are very much alive to its deficiencies and defects. The common Englishman under-estimates French wealth, he does not think much of wealth that can be expressed in francs, yet at the same time he does not over-estimate the wealth of England. This tendency to despise others is shown in a peculiarly dangerous way by the English when they go to war. At such times they almost invariably under-estimate the strength of the antagonist and the difficulty of the enterprise, thus imposing needless hardships on the inadequate little force that begins the war. [Sidenote: English underrate even the Forces of Nature.]