Passage of the Day: William Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”; A slight on the English!

“In fact, our friends may be said to have been among the first of that brood of hardy English adventurers who have subsequently invaded the Continent and swindled in all the capitals of Europe. The respect in those happy days of 1817-18 was very great for the wealth and honor of the Britons. They had not learned, as I am told, to haggle for bargains with the pertinacity which now distinguishes them. The great cities of Europe had not been as yet open to the enterprise of our rascals. And whereas, there is now hardly a town in France or Italy in which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own. With the happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere swindling inn-landlords, passing fictious cheques upon credulous bankers, robbing coachmakers of their carriages, goldsmiths of their trinkets, easy travellers of their money in cards-even public libraries of their books: thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais, travelling in your private carriage, and credit was at your hand wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen instead of cheating, were cheated.”