Green’s Dictionary of Slang

characteristically English; thus John Bullism n.

1786		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Ode Upon Ode’ Works (1794) I 418: Suppose we amateurs should, in fury, Just take it in our John-Bull heads to say [...] ‘We will have Oratorios at Drury?’.
1805		J. Davis Post Captain (1813) 42: Lord Fiddlefaddle [...] vowed it was a barbarous john Bull custom, to sit soaking over a bottle, and leaving the women to pine.
1821		Eclectic Rev. Nov. 318: This is surely the ne plus ultra of John-Bullism. An Englishman would not have been content to be saved in Noah's ark, without cutting his name in the timber.
1831		T. Hamilton Youth & Manhood of Cyril Thornton 1 232: There is nothing more intolerant than a young Englishman sallying forth into the world, full of his own ignorance and John Bullism.
1833		J. Nyren Cricketers of My Time (1902) 96: Punch! — not your new Ponche à la Romaine, or Ponche à la Groseille, or your modern cat-lap milk punch — punch be-devilled, but good, unsophisticated John Bull stuff.
1839		Dublin Rev. Nov. 406: So wedded are they to old customs, even to John Bullism — that it is not more than seven or eight years that French wines have been put upon the Boston tables.
1841		W.J. Neale Paul Periwinkle 520: He ran against as fair a specimen of John Bullism as any man could reasonably expect to meet at such a distance from the original manufactury.
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 54: And with such hearty John Bull notions as these did canny Yorkshire browbeat his crony of the sister kingdom.
1849		in N.E. Eliason Tarheel Talk (1956) 279: His round-tailed coat is altogether John Bull.
1854		Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Apr. 38/1: It was deemed advisable to exhibit a true John Bull dislike to starvation.
1858		C. Abbey diary 12 Aug. in Gosnell Before the Mast (1989) 121: Saw a John Bull Bark this morning.
1873		W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 402: The regular John Bull style of contempt for an inferior.
1876		J. Greenwood Low-Life Deeps 90: A hearty, John Bull kind of man .
1895		Mirror of Life 16 Feb. 14/4: [H]e was a not-to-be-denied and powerful fighter, who bored his way in to an adversary in spite of all opposition, and that is why Josh Hudson was called the ‘John Bull fighter’.