( 1 ) Town and village organizations, nurseries of law, order, and self-dependence, nuclei of power, capable of indefinite expansion, leading directly to a free and a strong government, the breeders of civil liberty.

( 2 ) Individualism in religion, Protestantism in the widest sense:  I mean by this, cultivation of the individual conscience as against authority.  This trait was as marked in this sturdy people in Catholic England as it is in Protestant England.  It is in the blood.  England never did submit to Rome, not even as France did, though the Gallic Church held out well.  Take the struggle of Henry ii. and the hierarchy.  Read the fight with prerogative all along.  The English Church never could submit.  It is a shallow reading of history to attribute the final break with Rome to the unbridled passion of Henry VIII.; that was an occasion only:  if it had not been that, it would have been something else.

Here we have the two necessary traits in the character of a great people:  the love and the habit of civil liberty and religious conviction and independence.  Allied to these is another trait—­truthfulness.  To speak the truth in word and action, to the verge of bluntness and offense—­and with more relish sometimes because it is individually obnoxious and unlovely—­is an English trait, clearly to be traced in the character of this people, notwithstanding the equivocations of Elizabethan diplomacy, the proverbial lying of English shopkeepers, and the fraudulent adulteration of English manufactures.  Not to lie is perhaps as much a matter of insular pride as of morals; to lie is unbecoming an Englishman.  When Captain Burnaby was on his way to Khiva he would tolerate no Oriental exaggeration of his army rank, although a higher title would have smoothed his way and added to his consideration.  An English official who was a captive at Bokhara (or Khiva) was offered his life by the Khan if he would abjure the Christian faith and say he was a Moslem; but he preferred death rather than the advantage of a temporary equivocation.  I do not suppose that he was a specially pious man at home or that he was a martyr to religious principle, but for the moment Christianity stood for England and English honor and civilization.  I can believe that a rough English sailor, who had not used a sacred name, except in vain, since he said his prayer at his mother’s knee, accepted death under like circumstances rather than say he was not a Christian.

The next determining cause in England’s career is: 

II.  The insular position.  Poor as the island was, this was the opportunity.  See what came of it: 

( 1 ) Maritime opportunity.  The irregular coastlines, the bays and harbors, the near islands and mainlands invited to the sea.  The nation became, per force, sailors—­as the ancient Greeks were and the modern Greeks are:  adventurers, discoverers—­hardy, ambitious, seeking food from the sea and wealth from every side.