Our vice is self-righteousness.  We are essentially an Old Testament people; Christianity has never entered into our soul we see ourselves as the Chosen, and by no effort of spiritual aspiration can attain unto humility.  In this there is nothing hypocritic.  The blatant upstart who builds a church, lays out his money in that way not merely to win social consideration; in his curious little soul he believes (so far as he can believe anything) that what he has done is pleasing to God and beneficial to mankind.  He may have lied and cheated for every sovereign he possesses; he may have polluted his life with uncleanness; he may have perpetrated many kinds of cruelty and baseness—­but all these things has he done against his conscience, and, as soon as the opportunity comes, he will make atonement for them in the way suggested by such faith as he has, the way approved by public opinion.  His religion, strictly defined, is an ineradicable belief in his own religiousness.  As an Englishman, he holds as birthright the true Piety, the true Morals.  That he has “gone wrong” is, alas, undeniable, but never—­even when leering most satirically—­did he deny his creed.  When, at public dinners and elsewhere, he tuned his voice to the note of edification, this man did not utter the lie of the hypocrite he meant every word he said.  Uttering high sentiments, he spoke, not as an individual, but as an Englishman, and most thoroughly did he believe that all who heard him owed in their hearts allegiance to the same faith.  He is, if you like, a Pharisee—­but do not misunderstand; his Pharisaism has nothing personal.  That would be quite another kind of man; existing, to be sure, in England, but not as a national type.  No; he is a Pharisee in the minor degree with regard to those of his countrymen who differ from him in dogma; he is Pharisee absolute with regard to the foreigner.  And there he stands, representing an Empire.

The word hypocrisy is perhaps most of all applied to our behaviour in matters of sexual morality, and here with specially flagrant misuse.  Multitudes of Englishmen have thrown aside the national religious dogma, but very few indeed have abandoned the conviction that the rules of morality publicly upheld in England are the best known in the world.  Any one interested in doing so can but too easily demonstrate that English social life is no purer than that of most other countries.  Scandals of peculiar grossness, at no long intervals, give rich opportunity to the scoffer.  The streets of our great towns nightly present an exhibition the like of which cannot be seen elsewhere in the world.  Despite all this, your average Englishman takes for granted his country’s moral superiority, and loses no chance of proclaiming it at the expense of other peoples.  To call him hypocrite, is simply not to know the man.  He may, for his own part, be gross-minded and lax of life; that has nothing to do with the matter; he believes in virtue.  Tell him that English morality is mere lip-service, and he will blaze with as honest anger as man ever felt.  He is a monument of self-righteousness, again not personal but national.