Two Kingdoms Divided by a Common Ignorance

I’m indebted to the gallant Peat Worrier for reminding me of some of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous reflections on this Kingdom. To wit, what with the seperate legal systems being much in the news lately:

[I]n all countries; perhaps in all, men are most ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the States; he is probably ignorant of India; but considering his opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own door. There is one country, for instance – its frontier not so far from London, its people closely akin, its language the same in all essentials with the English – of which I will go bail he knows nothing. His ignorance of the sister kingdom cannot be described; it can only be illustrated by anecdote. I once travelled with a man of plausible manners and good intelligence – a University man, as the phrase goes – a man, besides, who had taken his degree in life and knew a thing or two about the age we live in.