What is that you mutter? "A very inopportune moment to proclaim the fact." Well, no, I don't think so. And I'm sorry to hear you say it, for if there is a quality on which I plume2 myself, it's the delicate tact3 that makes me refrain from irritating the susceptibilities of the sensitive Saxon. See how polite I am to him! I call him sensitive. But, opportune1 or inopportune, Lord Salisbury says we are a Celtic fringe. I beg to retort, we are the British people.
"Conquered races," say my friends. Well, grant it for a moment. But in civilised societies, conquerors4 have, sooner or later, to amalgamate5 with the conquered. And where the vanquished6 are more numerous, they absorb the victors instead of being absorbed by them. That is the Nemesis7 of conquest. Rome annexed8 Etruria; and Etruscan M?cenas, Etruscan Sejanus organised and consolidated9 the Roman Empire. Rome annexed Italy; and the Jus Italicum grew at last to be the full Roman franchise10. Rome annexed the civilised world; and the provinces under C?sar blotted11 out the Senate. Britain is passing now through the self-same stage. One inevitable12 result of the widening of the electorate13 has been the transfer of power from the Teutonic to the Celtic half of Britain. I repeat, we are no longer a Celtic fringe: at the polls, in Parliament, we are the British people. Lord Salisbury may fail to perceive that fact, or, as I hold more probable, may affect to ignore it. What will such tactics avail? The ostrich14 is not usually counted among men as a perfect model of political wisdom.
And are we, after all, the conquered peoples? Meseems, I doubt it. They say we Celts dearly love a paradox15—which is perhaps only the sensible Saxon way of envisaging16 the fact that we catch at new truths somewhat quicker than other people. At any rate, 'tis a pet little paradox of my own that we have never been conquered, and that to our unconquered state we owe in the main our Radicalism17, our Socialism, our ingrained love of political freedom. We are tribal18 not feudal19; we think the folk more important than his lordship. The Saxon of the south-east is the conquered man: he has felt on his neck for generations the heel of feudalism. He is slavish; he is snobbish20; he dearly loves a lord. He shouts himself hoarse21 for his Beaconsfield or his Salisbury. Till lately, in his rural avatar, he sang but one song—
"God bless the squire22 and his relations, And keep us in our proper stations."
Trite23, isn't it? but so is the Saxon intelligence.
Seriously—for at times it is well to be serious—South-Eastern England, the England of the plains, has been conquered and enslaved in a dozen ages by each fresh invader24. Before the dawn of history, Heaven knows what shadowy Belg? and Iceni enslaved it. But historical time will serve our purpose. The Roman enslaved it, but left Caledonia and Hibernia free, the Cambrian, the Silurian, the Cornishman half-subjugated25. The Saxon and Anglian enslaved the east, but scarcely crossed over the watershed26 of the western ocean. The Dane, in turn, enslaved the Saxon in East Anglia and Yorkshire. The Norman ground all down to a common servitude between the upper and nether27 millstones of the feudal system—the king and the nobleman. At the end of it all, Teutonic England was reduced to a patient condition of contented28 serfdom: it had accommodated itself to its environment: no wish was left in it for the assertion of its freedom. To this day, the south-east, save where leavened29 and permeated30 by Celtic influences, hugs its chains and loves them. It produces the strange portent31 of the Conservative working-man, who yearns32 to be led by Lord Randolph Churchill.
With the North and the West, things go wholly otherwise. Even Cornwall, the earliest Celtic kingdom to be absorbed, was rather absorbed than conquered. I won't go into the history of the West Welsh of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall at full length, because it would take ten pages to explain it; and I know that readers are too profoundly interested in the Shocking Murder in the Borough33 Road to devote half-an-hour to the origin and evolution of their own community. It must suffice to say that the Devonian and Cornubian Welsh coalesced34 with the West Saxon for resistance to their common enemy the Dane, and that the West Saxon kingdom was made supreme35 in Britain by the founder36 of the English monarchy—one Dunstan, a monk37 from the West Welsh Abbey of Glastonbury. Wales proper, overrun piecemeal38 by Norman filibusterers, was roughly annexed by the Plantagenet kings; but it was only pacified39 under the Welsh Tudors, and was never at any time thoroughly40 feudalised. Glendower's rebellion, Richmond's rebellion, the Wesleyan revolt, the Rebecca riots, the tithe41 war, are all continuous parts of the ceaseless reaction of gallant42 little Wales against Teutonic aggression43. "An alien Church" still disturbs the Principality. The Lake District and Ayrshire—Celtic Cumbria and Strathclyde—only accepted by degrees the supremacy44 of the Kings of England and Scotland. The brother of a Scotch45 King was Prince of Cumbria, as the elder son of an English King was Prince of Wales. Indeed, David of Cumbria, who became David I. of Scotland, was the real consolidator46 of the Scotch kingdom. Cumbria was no more conquered by the Saxon Lothians than Scotland was conquered by the accession of James I. or by the Act of union. That means absorption, conciliation47, a certain degree of tribal independence. For Ireland, we know that the "mere48 Irish" were never subjugated at all till the days of Henry VII.; that they had to be reconquered by Cromwell and by William of Orange; that they rebelled more or less throughout the eighteenth century; and that they have been thorns in the side of Tory England through the whole of the nineteenth. As for the Highlands, they held out against the Stuarts till England had rejected that impossible dynasty; and then they rallied round the Stuarts as the enemies of the Saxon. General Wade's roads and the forts in the Great Glen, aided by a few trifles of Glencoe massacres49, kept them quiet for a moment. But it was only for a moment. The North is once more in open revolt. Dr. Clark and the crofters are its mode of expressing itself.
Nor is that all. The Celtic ideas have remained unaltered. Of course, I am not silly enough to believe there is any such thing as a Celtic race. I use the word merely as a convenient label for the league of the unconquered peoples in Britain. Ireland alone contains half-a-dozen races; and none of them appear to have anything in common with the Pict of Aberdeenshire or the West-Welsh of Cornwall. All I mean when I speak of Celtic ideas and Celtic ideals is the ideas and ideals proper and common to unconquered races. As compared with the feudalised and contented serf of South-Eastern England, are not the Irish peasant, the Scotch clansman, the "statesman" of the dales, the Cornish miner, free men every soul of them? English landlordism, imposed from without upon the crofter of Skye or the rack-rented tenant50 of a Connemara hillside, has never crushed out the native feeling of a right to the soil, the native resistance to an alien system. The south-east, I assert, has been brutalised into acquiescent51 serfdom by a long course of feudalism; the west and north still retain the instincts of freemen.
As long as South-Eastern England and the Normanised or feudalised Saxon lowlands of Scotland contained all the wealth, all the power, and most of the population of Britain, the Celtic ideals had no chance of realising themselves. But the industrial revolution of the present century has turned us right-about-face, has transferred the balance of power from the secondary strata52 to the primary strata in Britain; from the agricultural lowlands to the uplands of coal and iron, the cotton factories, the woollen trade. Great industrial cities have grown up in the Celtic or semi-Celtic area—Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Belfast, Aberdeen, Cardiff. The Celt—that is to say, the mountaineer and the man of the untouched country—reproduces his kind much more rapidly than the Teuton. The Highlander53 and the Irishman swarm54 into Glasgow; the Irishman and the Welshman swarm into Liverpool; the west-countryman into Bristol; Celts of all types into London, Southampton, Newport, Birmingham, Sheffield. This eastward55 return-wave of Celts upon the Teuton has leavened the whole mass; if you look at the leaders of Radicalism in England you will find they bear, almost without exception, true Celtic surnames. Chartists and Socialists56 of the first generation were marshalled by men of Cymric descent, like Ernest Jones and Robert Owen, or by pure-blooded Irishmen like Fergus O'Connor. It is not a mere accident that the London Socialists of the present day should be led by Welshmen like William Morris, or by the eloquent57 brogue of Bernard Shaw's audacious oratory58. We Celts now lurk59 in every corner of Britain; we have permeated it with our ideas; we have inspired it with our aspirations60; we have roused the Celtic remnant in the south-east itself to a sense of their wrongs; and we are marching to-day, all abreast61, to the overthrow62 of feudalism. If Lord Salisbury thinks we are a Celtic fringe he is vastly mistaken. But he doesn't really think so: 'tis a piece of his ponderous63 Saxon humour. Talk of "Batavian grace," indeed! Well, the Cecils came first from the fens64 of Lincolnshire.
点击收听单词发音
1 opportune | |
adj.合适的,适当的 | |
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2 plume | |
n.羽毛;v.整理羽毛,骚首弄姿,用羽毛装饰 | |
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3 tact | |
n.机敏,圆滑,得体 | |
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4 conquerors | |
征服者,占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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5 amalgamate | |
v.(指业务等)合并,混合 | |
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6 vanquished | |
v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 );战胜;克服;抑制 | |
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7 nemesis | |
n.给以报应者,复仇者,难以对付的敌手 | |
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8 annexed | |
[法] 附加的,附属的 | |
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9 consolidated | |
a.联合的 | |
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10 franchise | |
n.特许,特权,专营权,特许权 | |
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11 blotted | |
涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 ); (用吸墨纸)吸干 | |
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12 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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13 electorate | |
n.全体选民;选区 | |
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14 ostrich | |
n.鸵鸟 | |
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15 paradox | |
n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法;自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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16 envisaging | |
想像,设想( envisage的现在分词 ) | |
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17 radicalism | |
n. 急进主义, 根本的改革主义 | |
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18 tribal | |
adj.部族的,种族的 | |
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19 feudal | |
adj.封建的,封地的,领地的 | |
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20 snobbish | |
adj.势利的,谄上欺下的 | |
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21 hoarse | |
adj.嘶哑的,沙哑的 | |
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22 squire | |
n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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23 trite | |
adj.陈腐的 | |
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24 invader | |
n.侵略者,侵犯者,入侵者 | |
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25 subjugated | |
v.征服,降伏( subjugate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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26 watershed | |
n.转折点,分水岭,分界线 | |
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27 nether | |
adj.下部的,下面的;n.阴间;下层社会 | |
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28 contented | |
adj.满意的,安心的,知足的 | |
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29 leavened | |
adj.加酵母的v.使(面团)发酵( leaven的过去式和过去分词 );在…中掺入改变的因素 | |
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30 permeated | |
弥漫( permeate的过去式和过去分词 ); 遍布; 渗入; 渗透 | |
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31 portent | |
n.预兆;恶兆;怪事 | |
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32 yearns | |
渴望,切盼,向往( yearn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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33 borough | |
n.享有自治权的市镇;(英)自治市镇 | |
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34 coalesced | |
v.联合,合并( coalesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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36 Founder | |
n.创始者,缔造者 | |
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37 monk | |
n.和尚,僧侣,修道士 | |
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38 piecemeal | |
adj.零碎的;n.片,块;adv.逐渐地;v.弄成碎块 | |
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39 pacified | |
使(某人)安静( pacify的过去式和过去分词 ); 息怒; 抚慰; 在(有战争的地区、国家等)实现和平 | |
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40 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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41 tithe | |
n.十分之一税;v.课什一税,缴什一税 | |
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42 gallant | |
adj.英勇的,豪侠的;(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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43 aggression | |
n.进攻,侵略,侵犯,侵害 | |
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44 supremacy | |
n.至上;至高权力 | |
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45 scotch | |
n.伤口,刻痕;苏格兰威士忌酒;v.粉碎,消灭,阻止;adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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46 consolidator | |
n.并装业者,混载业者 | |
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47 conciliation | |
n.调解,调停 | |
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48 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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49 massacres | |
大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 ); 惨败 | |
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50 tenant | |
n.承租人;房客;佃户;v.租借,租用 | |
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51 acquiescent | |
adj.默许的,默认的 | |
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52 strata | |
n.地层(复数);社会阶层 | |
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53 highlander | |
n.高地的人,苏格兰高地地区的人 | |
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54 swarm | |
n.(昆虫)等一大群;vi.成群飞舞;蜂拥而入 | |
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55 eastward | |
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部 | |
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56 socialists | |
社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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57 eloquent | |
adj.雄辩的,口才流利的;明白显示出的 | |
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58 oratory | |
n.演讲术;词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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59 lurk | |
n.潜伏,潜行;v.潜藏,潜伏,埋伏 | |
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60 aspirations | |
强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 ); 志向; 发送气音; 发 h 音 | |
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61 abreast | |
adv.并排地;跟上(时代)的步伐,与…并进地 | |
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62 overthrow | |
v.推翻,打倒,颠覆;n.推翻,瓦解,颠覆 | |
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63 ponderous | |
adj.沉重的,笨重的,(文章)冗长的 | |
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64 fens | |
n.(尤指英格兰东部的)沼泽地带( fen的名词复数 ) | |
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