LABOR CREATES THE ONLY TRUE NOBILITY.
As Americans we are justly proud that we have no hereditary titles,
but each man is measured by his own personal worth.
While believing firmly in the propriety of this order of things, yet
we would not have you imagine that we underestimate the value of a
respectable lineage, but it is better to be the originator of a great
family than to be the degenerate descendant of one.
With but few exceptions those Americans whose lives are very properly
held up as an example for the imitation of our youth, are men who
have had to work their own way from the humblest walks in life, to
the highest in the gift of the nation.
This is true of Franklin, the statesman and philosopher, as it is of
Lincoln, the patriot and martyr, and the splendid list of names that
adorn the pages of our intervening history.
Smiles in his "Self-Help" shows how in England, a land where ancestry
counts for so much, the descendants of the greatest men, even of
kings, have been found in the humblest of callings.
The blood of all men flows from equally remote sources; and though
some are unable to trace their line directly beyond their
grandfathers, all are nevertheless justified in placing at the head
of their pedigree the great progenitors of the race, as Lord
Chesterfield did when he wrote, "ADAM _de Stanhope_--EVE _de
Stanhope_." No class is ever long stationary. The mighty fall, and
the humble are exalted. New families take the place of the old, who
disappear among the ranks of the common people. Burke's "Vicissitudes
of Families" strikingly exhibits the rise and fall of families, and
shows that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are
greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This
author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce
the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of
Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ruined many
of the old nobility and dispersed their families. Yet their
descendants in many cases survive, and are to be found among the
ranks of the people. Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," that "some who
justly hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, are
hid in the heap of common men." Thus Burke shows that two of the
lineal descendants of the Earl of Kent, sixth son of Edward I, were
discovered in a butcher and a toll-gatherer; that the great-grandson
of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, sank to
the condition of a cobbler at Newport, in Shropshire; and that among
the lineal descendants of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III,
was the late sexton of St. George's Church, London. It is understood
that the lineal descendant of Simon de Montfort, England's premier
baron, is a saddler in Tooley street. One of the descendants of the
"Proud Percys," a claimant of the title of Duke of Northumberland,
was a Dublin trunkmaker; and not many years since one of the
claimants for the title of Earl of Perth presented himself in the
person of a laborer in a Northumberland coal-pit. Hugh Miller, when
working as a stone-mason near Edinburgh, was served by a hodman, who
was one of the numerous claimants for the earldom of Crauford--all
that was wanted to establish his claim being a missing marriage
certificate; and while the work was going on, the cry resounded from
the walls many times in the day, of "John, Yearl Crauford, bring us
another hod o' lime." One of Oliver Cromwell's great-grandsons was a
grocer in London, and others of his descendants died in great
poverty. Many barons of proud names and titles have perished, like
the sloth, upon their family tree, after eating up all the leaves;
while others have been overtaken by adversities which they have been
unable to retrieve, and have sunk at last into poverty and obscurity.
Such are the mutabilities of rank and fortune.
The great bulk of the English peerage is comparatively modern, so far
as the titles go; but it is not the less noble that it has been
recruited to so large an extent from the ranks of honorable industry.
In olden times, the wealth and commerce of London, conducted as it
was by energetic and enterprising men, was a prolific source of
peerages. Thus, the earldom of Cornwallis was founded by Thomas
Cornwallis, the Cheapside merchant; that of Essex by William Capel,
the draper; and that of Craven by William Craven, the merchant
tailor. The modern Earl of Warwick is not descended from the "King-
maker," but from William Greville, the woolstapler; whilst the modern
dukes of Northumberland find their head, not in the Percys, but in
Hugh Smithson, a respectable London apothecary. The founders of the
families of Dartmouth, Radnor, Ducie, and Pomfret, were respectively
a skinner, a silk manufacturer, a merchant tailor, and a Calais
merchant; whilst the founders of the peerages of Tankerville, Dormer,
and Coventry, were mercers. The ancestors of Earl Romney, and Lord
Dudley and Ward, were goldsmiths and jewelers; and Lord Dacres was a
banker in the reign of Charles I, as Lord Overstone is in that of
Queen Victoria. Edward Osborne, the founder of the dukedom of Leeds,
was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich cloth-worker on London
Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by
leaping into the Thames after her, and whom he eventually married.
William Phipps, at one time Colonial Governor of Massachusetts, and
the founder of the Normandy family, was the son of a gunsmith who
emigrated to Maine, where this remarkable man was born in 1651. He
was one of a family of not fewer than twenty-six children (of whom
twenty-one were sons), whose only fortune lay in their stout hearts
and strong arms. William seems to have had a sash of the Danish
seablood in his veins, and he did not take kindly to the quiet life
of a shepherd in which he spent his early years. By nature bold and
adventurous, he longed to become a sailor and roam through the world.
He sought to join some ship; but not being able to find one, he
apprenticed himself to a ship-builder, with whom he thoroughly learnt
his trade, acquiring the arts of reading and writing during his
leisure hours. Having completed his apprenticeship and removed to
Boston, he wooed and married a widow of some means, after which he
set up a little ship-building yard of his own, built a ship, and
putting to sea in her, he engaged in the lumber trade, which he
carried on in a plodding and laborious way for the space of about ten
years.
It happened that one day, while passing through the crooked streets
of old Boston, he overheard some sailors talking to each other of a
wreck which had just taken place off the Bahamas; that of a Spanish
ship, supposed to have much money on board. His adventurous spirit
was at once kindled, and getting together a likely crew without loss
of time, he set sail for the Bahamas. The wreck being well in shore
he easily found it, and succeeded in recovering a great deal of its
cargo, but very little money; and the result was that he barely
defrayed his expenses. His success had been such, however, as to
stimulate his enterprising spirit; and when he was told of another
and far more richly laden vessel which had been wrecked near Port de
la Plata more than half a century before, he forthwith formed the
resolution of raising the wreck, or at all events of fishing up the
treasure.
Being too poor, however, to undertake such an enterprise without
powerful help, he set sail for England in the hope that he might
there obtain it. The fame of his success in raising the wreck off the
Bahamas had already preceded him. He applied direct to the
Government. By his urgent enthusiasm, he succeeded in overcoming the
usual inertia of official minds; and Charles II eventually placed at
his disposal the "Rose Algier," a ship of eighteen guns and ninety-
five men, appointing him to the chief command.
Phipps then set sail to find the Spanish ship and fish up the
treasure. He reached the coast of Hispaniola in safety; but how to
find the sunken ship was the great difficulty. The fact of the wreck
was more than fifty years old; and Phipps had only the traditionary
rumors of the even to work upon. There was a wide coast to explore,
and an outspread ocean, without any trace whatever of the argosy
which lay somewhere at its bottom. But the man was stout in heart and
full of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the coast, and
for weeks they went on fishing up seaweed, shingle and bits of rock.
No occupation could be more trying to seamen, and they began to
grumble one to another, and to whisper that the man in command had
brought them on a fool's errand.
At length the murmurers gained head, and the men broke into open
mutiny. A body of them rushed one day on to the quarter-deck, and
demanded that the voyage should be relinquished. Phipps, however, was
not a man to be intimidated; he seized the ringleaders, and sent the
others back to their duty. It became necessary to bring the ship to
anchor close to a small island for the purpose of repairs; and, to
lighten her, the chief part of the stores was landed. Discontent
still increasing among the crew, a new plot was laid among the men on
shore to seize the ship, throw Phipps overboard, and start on a
piratical cruise against the Spaniards in the South Seas. But it was
necessary to secure the services of the chief ship-carpenter, who was
consequently made privy to the plot. This man proved faithful, and a
once told the captain of his danger. Summoning about him those whom
he knew to be loyal, Phipps had the ship's guns loaded, which
commanded the shore, and ordered the bridge communicating with the
vessel to be drawn up. When the mutineers made their appearance, the
captain hailed them, and told the men he would fire upon them if they
approached the stores (still on land), when they drew back; on which
Phipps had the stores reshipped under cover of his guns. The
mutineers, fearful of being left upon the barren island, threw down
their arms and implored to be permitted to return to their duty. The
request was granted, and suitable precautions were taken against
further mischief. Phipps, however, took the first opportunity of
landing the mutinous part of the crew, and engaging other men in
their places; but, by the time that he could again proceed actively
with his explorations, he found it absolutely necessary to proceed to
England for the purpose of repairing the ship. He had now, however,
gained more precise information as to the spot where the Spanish
treasure-ship had sunk; and, though as yet baffled, he was more
confident than ever of the eventual success of his enterprise.
Returned to London, Phipps reported the result of his voyage to the
Admirality, who professed to be pleased with his exertions; but he
had been unsuccessful, and they would not entrust him with another
king's ship. James II was now on the throne, and the Government was
in trouble; so Phipps and his golden project appealed to them in
vain. He next tried to raise the requisite means by a public
subscription. At first he was laughed at; but his ceaseless
importunity at length prevailed, and after four years' dinning of his
project into the ears of the great and influential--during which time
he lived in poverty--he at length succeeded. A company was formed in
twenty shares, The Duke of Albemarle, son of General Monk, taking the
chief interest in it, and subscribing the principal part of the
necessary fund for the prosecution of the enterprise.
Phipps was successful in this undertaking. He started other
enterprises and succeeded. He was knighted, and as has been stated,
became the founder of one of England's noble families. It should be
said, however, that beyond his perseverance, he had but few qualities
to commend him. He was coarse, ignorant, and brutal, and had to fly
from Massachusetts to save his life from an indignant people.
But true nobility is not that which is conferred by the warrant of a
monarch. If as Pope says, "An honest man's the noblest work of God,"
then the nobles man is the honest man, who with his own clear brain
and strong right arm, wins his way up from the humblest walks in
life, till by virtue of his manhood, he stands the peer of peers, and
by Divine right the equal of all earth's kings.
We hear a great deal about an American aristocracy, but no matter
what the wishes of a few people with un-American tastes may be, the
only aristocracy that can ever find recognition here, is that of
brains and the success born of hones toil.
Ninety-nine out of every hundred of the rich families that are
wrongly supposed to constitute our aristocracy at this time, were
poor less than fifty years ago. Many of the rich families of fifty
years ago are poor to-day; and so fortune varies and changes in this
new land. Our true aristocrats are successful men like Peter Cooper,
who left the world better for having lived in it. We count among our
aristocrats, patriots like Lincoln, and if his descendants emulate
his noble example, they too will be ennobled by their countrymen. We
reckon Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Hawthorne, Elisha Howe
and George W. Childs among our aristocrats. Andrew Carnegie deserves
a place in the same list of American peers, as does Thomas A. Edison.
But after all the true title to nobility is implied in the words
"gentleman" and "lady," and with these we need not fear comparison
with all the world's titled nobles.