In their political capacity, people of fashion, among whom, for the
present purpose, we include the whole of the aristocracy, are the common
butt of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.
They are accused of standing between the mass of the people and their
inalienable rights; of opposing, with obstinate resistance, the progress
of rational liberty, and of----but, in short, you have only to glance
over the pages of any democratic newspaper, to be made aware of the
horrible political iniquity of the aristocracy of England.
The aristocracy in England, considered politically, is a subject too
broad, too wide, and too deep for us, we most readily confess; nor is it
exactly proper for a work of a sketchy nature, in which we only skim
lightly along the surface of society, picking up any little curiosity
as we go along, but without dipping deep into motives or habits of
thought or action, especially in state affairs.
Since our late lamented friends, the Whigs, have gone to enjoy a
virtuous retirement and dignified ease, we have taken no delight in
politics. There is no fun going on now-a-days--no quackery, no
mountebankery, no asses, colonial or otherwise. The dull jog-trot
fellows who have got into Downing Street have made politics no joke; and
now that silence, as of the tomb, reigns amongst _quondam_ leaders of
the Treasury Benech--now that the camp-followers have followed the
leader, and the auxiliaries are dispersed, we really have nobody to
laugh at; and, like our departed friends, have too little of the
statesman to be serious about serious matters.
With regard to the aristocracy in their public capacity, this is the way
we always look at them.
In the first place, they govern us through the tolerance of public
opinion, as men having station, power, property, much to lose, and
little comparatively to gain--men who have put in bail to a large amount
for their good behaviour: and, in the second place, they govern us,
because really and truly there are so many outrageously discordant
political quacks, desirous of taking our case in hand, that we find it
our interest to entrust our public health to an accomplished physician,
even although he charges a guinea a visit, and refuses to insure a
perfect cure with a box of pills costing thirteenpence-halfpenny. There
can be no doubt whatever, that the most careful men are the men who have
most to care for: he that has a great deal to lose, will think twice,
where he that has nothing to lose, will not think at all: and the
government of this vast and powerful empire, we imagine, with great
deference, must require a good deal of thinking. In a free press, we
have a never-dying exponent of public opinion, a perpetual advocate of
rational liberty, and a powerful engine for the exposure, which is
ultimately the redress, of wrong: and although this influential member
of our government receives no public money, nor is called right
honourable, nor speaks in the House, yet in fact and in truth it has a
seat in the Cabinet, and, upon momentous occasions, a voice of thunder.
That the aristocracy of power should be in advance of public opinion, is
not in the nature of things, and should no more be imputed as a crime to
them, than to us not to run when we are not in a hurry: they cannot, as
a body, move upwards, because they stand so near the top, that dangerous
ambition is extinguished; and it is hardly to be expected that, as a
body, they should move downwards, unless they find themselves supported
in their position upon the right of others, in which case we have always
seen that, although they descend gradually, they descend at last.
This immobility of our aristocracy is the origin of the fixity of our
political institutions, which has been, is, and will continue to be, the
great element of our pre-eminence as a nation: it possesses a force
corrective and directive, and at once restrains the excess, while it
affords a point of resistance, to the current of the popular will. And
this immobility, it should never be forgotten, is owing to that very
elevation so hated and so envied: wanting which the aristocracy would be
subject to the vulgar ambitions, vulgar passions, and sordid desires of
meaner aspirants after personal advantage and distinction. It is a
providential blessing, we firmly believe, to a great nation to possess a
class, by fortune and station, placed above the unseemly contentions of
adventurers in public life: looked up to as men responsible without hire
for the public weal, and, without sordid ambitions of their own,
solicitous to preserve it: looked up to, moreover, as examples of that
refinement of feeling, jealous sense of honour, and manly independence,
serving as detersives of the grosser humours of commercial life, and
which, filtering through the successive _strata_ of society, clarify and
purify in their course, leaving the very dregs the cleaner for their
passage.
A body thus by habit and constitution opposed to innovation, and
determined against the recklessness of inconsiderate reforms, has
furnished a stock argument to those who delight in "going a-head" faster
than their feet, which are the grounds of their arguments, can carry
them. We hear the aristocracy called stumbling-blocks in the way of
legislative improvements, and, with greater propriety of metaphor,
likened to drags upon the wheel of progressive reform; and so on,
through all the regions of illustration, until we are in at the death of
the metaphor. How happens to be overlooked the advantage of this
anti-progressive barrier, to the concentration and deepening of the
flood of opinion on any given subject? how is it that men are apt
altogether to forget that this very barrier it is which prevents the too
eager crowd from trampling one another to death in their haste? which
gives time for the ebullitions of unreasoning zeal, and reckless
enthusiasm, and the dregs of agitation, quietly to subside; and, for all
that, bears the impress of reason and sound sense to circulate with
accumulated pressure through the public mind? Were it not for the
barrier which the aristocracy of power thus interposes for a time, only
to withdraw when the time for interposition is past, we should live in a
vortex of revolution and counter-revolution. Our whole time, and our
undivided energies, would be employed in acting hastily, and repenting
at leisure; in repining either because our biennial revolutions went too
far, or did not go far enough; in expending our national strength in the
unprofitable struggles of faction with faction, adventurer with
adventurer: with every change we should become more changeful, and with
every settlement more unsettled: one by one our distant colonies would
follow the bright example of our people at home, and our commerce and
trade would fall with our colonial empire. In fine, we should become in
the eyes of the world what France now is--a people ready to sacrifice
every solid advantage, every gradual, and therefore permanent,
improvement, every ripening fruit that time and care, and the sunshine
of peace only can mature, to a genius for revolution.
This turbulent torrent of headlong reform, to-day flooding its banks,
to-morrow dribbling in a half-dry channel, the aristocracy of power
collects, concentrates, and converts into a power, even while it
circumscribes it, and represses. So have we seen a mountain stream
useless in summer, dangerous in winter, now a torrent now a puddle,
wasting its unprofitable waters in needless brawling; let a barrier be
opposed to its downward course, let it be dammed up, let a point of
resistance be afforded where its waters may be gathered together, and
regulated, you find it turned to valuable account, acting with men's
hands, becoming a productive labourer, and contributing its time and its
industry to advance the general sum of rational improvement.
From the material to the moral world you may always reason by analogy.
If you study the theory of revolutions, you will not fail to observe
that, wherever, in constructing your barrier, you employ ignorant
engineers, who have not duly calculated the depth and velocity of the
current; whenever you raise your dam to such a height that no flood will
carry away the waste waters; whenever you talk of finality to the
torrent, saying, thus long shalt thou flow, and no longer; whenever you
put upon your power a larger wheel than it can turn--you are slowly but
surely preparing for that flood which will overwhelm your work, destroy
your mills, your dams, and your engines; in a word, you are the remote
cause of a revolution.
This is the danger into which aristocracies of power are prone to fall:
the error of democracies is, to delight in the absolutism of liberty;
but thus it is with liberty itself, that true dignity of man, that
parent of all blessings: absolute and uncontrolled, a tyranny beyond the
power to endure itself, the worst of bad masters, a fool who is his own
client; restrained and tempered, it becomes a wholesome discipline, a
property with its rights and its duties, a sober responsibility,
bringing with it, like all other responsibilities, its pleasures and its
cares; not a toy to be played with, nor even a jewel to be worn in the
bonnet, but a talent to be put out to interest, and enjoyed in the
unbroken tranquillity of national thankfulness and peace.
Another defect in the aristocracy of power is, the narrow sphere of
their sympathies, extending only to those they know, and are familiar
with; that is to say, only as far as the circumference of their own
limited circle. This it is that renders them keenly apprehensive of
danger close at hand, but comparatively indifferent to that which
menaces them from a distance. Placed upon a lofty eminence, they are
comparatively indifferent while clouds obscure, and thunder rattles
along the vale; their resistance is of a passive kind, directed not to
the depression of those beneath them, nor to overcome pressure from
above, but to preserve themselves in the enviable eminence of their
position, and there to establish themselves in permanent security.
As a remedy for this short-sightedness, the result of their isolated
position, the aristocracy of power is always prompt to borrow from the
aristocracy of talent that assistance in the practical working of its
government which it requires; they are glad to find safe men among the
people to whom they can delegate the cares of office, the annoyances of
patronage, and the odium of power; and, the better to secure these men,
they are always ready to lift them among themselves, to identify them
with their exclusive interests, and to give them a permanent
establishment among the nobles of the land.
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