pages 126-127

126                Illustrations of Lancashire

more so since they are little inclined to pay compliments, and not at all to flatter. That men of small beginnings, and who have had little or no education, are apt, on becoming rich, tobe irritable, jealous, and overbearing, is true perhaps everywhere; in Lancashire it has been observed with satisfaction that the exceptions are more numerous than the rule. Whatever the stint and privations in the morning of life, these, it has been again observed, have seldom led to miserly habits when old. Most of the modern Lancashire wealthy (or their fathers, at all events, before them) began with a trifle. Hence the legitimate pride they take in their commercial belongings - a genuine Lancashire man would rather you praised his mill or warehouse than his mansion. So far from becoming miserly, no one in the world deteriorates less. Most Lancashire capitalists are well aware that it is no credit to a man of wealth to be in arrears with the public, and when money is wanted for some noble purpose are quick in response. This, however, represents them but imperfectly, of a thousand it might be said with as much truth as of the late Sir Benjamin Heywood, the eminent Manchester banker, "He dared to trust God with his charities, and without a witness, and risk the consequences."

Manchester                  127

So much for the Lancashire heart; though on many of its excellent attributes, wanting space, we have not touched. The prime characteristic of the head seems to consist, not in the preponderance of any particular faculty, but in the good working order of the faculties in general; so that the whole can be brought to bear at once upon whatever is taken in hand.1
The Lancashire man has plenty of faults and weaknesses. His energy is by no means of that admirable kind which is distinguished by never degenerating into restlessness; neither in disputes is he prone to courtly forbearance. Sincerity, whether in friend or foe, he admires nevertheless; whence the exceptional toleration in Lancashire of all sorts of individual opinions.Possessed of good, old-fashioned common-sense, when educated and reflective he is seldom astray in his estimate of the essentially worthy and true; so that, however novel occasionally his action, we may be pretty sure that underneath it there is some definite principle of equity. Manchester put forth the original

1. For delineations of local and personal character in full we look to the novelists. After supreme Scarsdale, and the well-known tales by Mrs. Gaskell and Mrs. Banks, may be mentioned, as instructive in regard to Lancashire ways and manners, Coultours Factory, by Miss Emily Rodwell, and the first portion of Mr. Hirst's Hiram Gregg. Lord Beaconsfield's admirable portrait of Millbank, the Lancashire manufacturer, given in Coningsby in 1844, had for its original the late Mr. Edmund Ashworth of Turton, whose mills had been visited by the author, then Mr. Disraeli, the previous year.