To interrupt another, even in common Conversation, is reckon’d highly indecent [of the North American Savages]. How different this is from the Conduct of a polite British House of Commons where scarce every person without some confusion, that makes the Speaker hoarse in calling to Order and how different from the Mode of Conversation in many polite Companies of Europe, where if you do not deliver your Sentence with great Rapidity you are cut off in the middle of it by the Impatient Loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffer’d to finish it . . .’
[Satirical Tract by Benjamin Franklin, 1784: Remarks concerning the Savages of North America]
[James Gillray’s satirical print, 1801, marking the long-awaited implementation of the Acts of Union bringing England and Ireland together as the United Kingdom. Note the emblemata above the Speaker’s Chair.]
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