Americans had spines once.

[Requia ☣]

From a biography I'm reading:

"The legislature of Georgia, in the preceding year, had authorized the sale of four immense tracts of land, supposed to embrace twenty millions of acres, for five hundred thousand dollars, to four land companies.  It was proved that, with one exception, every member of the legislature who voted for this bill was interested in the purchase.  A more flagrant case of wholesale legislative corruption had never been known, and when the facts were exposed the whole State rose in indignation against it, elected a new legislature, annulled the sale, expunged the act from the record, and finally, by calling a convention, made expunging the act itself a part of the state constitution."

[Cain]

I'm feeling rather similar about the British.  I'm reading MI5's Authorized History (which is very good, Christopher Andrew has no hesistations about exposing the failures of the Security Service, it's not just a puff piece about how wonderful spooks are) and I've just finished the section about WWII.  It, of course, talks about the hilariously effective Double Cross system the British put into play, but it also mentions two other important things:

1) A British MI5 Officer lost his temper once and started using his fists on a German spy.  Other officers restrained him, he apologized and a senior figure in MI5 recorded in his diary about how barbaric treating prisoners in such a way was, a sentiment shared by many of his fellow officers.  This was the only recorded use of cruelty against a German spy by British intelligence services in mainland Britain during the Second World War.

2) It talks about the British public reaction to the V-1 and V-2 rocket campaign against the capital, which involved several hundred rockets hitting the country and over two thousand people being killed.  Admittedly, this was the late stage of the war, there had already been lots of death, and previous attacks on the capital...but I still remember the reaction to 7/7 where I was working ("lets round up the fucking Pakis and kick their heads in" - direct quote) and the reaction to the rocket campaign was rather more stoic.  And didnt involve any German POWs or spies being tortured in any way.