Both the nobility and gentry of this country stand upon a basis so
entirely peculiar, that, were it for that cause only, we could not
greatly wonder at the perverse misconstructions upon these institutions
so prevalent abroad. Indeed the peculiarity of our aristocracy is so
effectual for obscurity, that we also, as a nation, are ignorant upon
much which marks it characteristically; our own ignorance partly
explains, and partly has caused, the continental ignorance. Could it,
indeed, be expected that any people should be sensible of their own
peculiarities _as_ peculiarities? Of all men, for instance, a Persian
would be the last man from whom we could reasonably look for an account
of Persia; because those habits of Persians as Orientals, as Mussulmans,
and as heretic Mussulmans, which would chiefly fix the attention of
Europeans, must be unexciting to the mind of a native.
And universally we know that, in every community, the features which
would most challenge attention from a stranger, have been those which
the natives systematically have neglected. If, but for two days'
residence, it were possible that a modern European could be carried back
to Rome and Roman society, what a harvest of interesting facts would he
reap as to the habits of social intercourse! Yet these are neglected by
Roman writers, as phenomena too familiar, which there was no motive for
noticing. Why should a man notice as a singularity what every man
witnesses daily as an experience? A satirist, like Juvenal, is obliged,
indeed, to notice particular excesses: but this is done obliquely, and
so far only as to identify the case he means; besides that often they
are caricatured. Or an antiquarian observer, like Athenæus, finds, after
ten centuries of social life amongst the same race, a field of
observation in the present, which he sees as contrasted with the past
which he reads of. It is in that way only that we English know any thing
of our own past habits. Some of these are brought forward indirectly in
the evidence upon judicial trials--some in dramatic scenes; and, as
happened in the case of Athenæus, we see English historians, at periods
of great conscious revolution, (Holinshed, for instance,[5] whose youth
had passed in the church reformation,) exerting themselves to recover,
through old men's recollections, traditions of a social life which they
felt to be passing away for ever. Except, however, in these two cases,
the one indirect, the other by accident, coinciding with an epoch of
great importance, we find little in the way of description, or
philosophic examination, toward any sustained record of English
civilization as intermitting from one era to another, and periodically
resumed. The same truth holds good of civilization on the Continent, and
for the same reason, viz. that no nation describes itself, or can do so.
To see an object you must not stand in its centre; your own station must
be external. The eye cannot see itself, nor a mechanic force measure
itself, as if it were its own resistance.
[Footnote 5: An introduction, prefixed to Holinshed, descriptive of
domestic life amongst the English, as it may be presumed to have existed
for the century before, (1450-1550,) was written (according to our
recollection) by Harrison. Almost a century earlier, we have Chief
Justice Fortescue's account of the French peasantry, a record _per
antiphrasin_ of the English. About the great era of 1688, we have the
sketch of contemporary English civilization by Chamberlayne. So rare and
distant are the glimpses which we obtain of ourselves at different
periods.]
It is easy, therefore, to understand why, amongst the writers of any
given nation, we are least entitled to look for an account of the habits
or separate institutions distinguishing that nation: since the
stimulation of difference least of all exists for those who never see
that difference broadly relieved in adverse habits or institutions. To
such nation its own aristocracy, like its own climate, seems a positive
fact, neither good nor bad, and worthy of little notice, as apparently
open to little improvement. And yet to each nation its own aristocracy
is often the arbitrating cause, but always the exponent or index of its
future political welfare. Laws are important; administration of laws is
important; to be Protestant or Popish is important; and so of many other
agencies: but, as was said by Harrington in his _Oceana_, there is
something in the original idea and in the executive composition of a
gentry which cannot be created artificially, and (if wanting) cannot be
supplied by substitution. Upon the quality of an aristocracy in critical
periods, in those periods when the national stability is menaced by
revolution, or the national independence by aggression, depends the
national salvation. Let us lay before the reader an illustration.
It is our deliberate conviction, that, from the foundations of civil
society, human annals present no second case of infamy equal to that
which is presented by the condition of Spain and Portugal from the year
1807 up to our own immediate era. It is a case the more interesting,
because two opposite verdicts have been pronounced upon it by men of the
greatest ability amongst ourselves. Some, as the present and the late
Laureate, have found in the Peninsular struggle with Napoleon, the very
perfection of popular grandeur; others, agreeing with ourselves, have
seen in this pretended struggle nothing but the last extravagance of
thrasonic and impotent national arrogance. Language more frantically
inflated, and deeds more farcically abject, surely were never before
united. It seems therefore strange, that a difference, even thus far,
should exist between Englishmen standing upon the same facts, starting
from the sane principles. But perhaps, as regards Mr Wordsworth, he did
not allow enough for the long series of noxious influences under which
Spain had suffered. And this, at any rate, is notorious--he spoke of the
Spanish people, the original stock (unmodified by courtly usages, or
foreign sentiments, or city habits) of the Spanish peasantry and petty
rural proprietors. This class, as distinguished from the aristocracy,
was the class he relied on; and he agreed with us in looking upon the
Spanish aristocracy as traitors--that is, as recreants and
apostates--from any and every cause meriting the name of national. If he
found a moral grandeur in Spain, it was amongst that poor forsaken
peasantry, incapable of political combination, who could not make a
_national_ party in the absence of their natural leaders. Now, if we
adopt the mild temperament of some Spanish writers, calling this "a
_schism_ in the natural interests," how shocking that such a schism
_could_ have arisen at so dreadful a crisis! That schism, which, as a
fact, is urged, in the way of excuse, merely as a possibility, is
already itself the opprobrium for Spain never to be washed out. For in
Spain, what _was_ the aristocracy? Let us not deceive ourselves, by
limiting this term to the feudal nobility or grandees; the aristocracy
comprehended every man that would naturally have become a commissioned
officer in the army. Here, therefore, read the legend and superscription
of the national dishonour. The Spanish people found themselves without a
gentry for leading their armies. England possessed, and possesses a
gentry, the noblest that the world has seen, who are the natural leaders
of her intrepid commonalty, alike in her fleets and in her armies. But
why? How and in what sense qualified? Not only by principle and by
_honour_--that glorious distinction which poor men can appreciate, even
when less sternly summoned to its duties; not only by courage as fiery
and as passively enduring as the courage of the lower ranks, but by a
physical robustness superior to that of any other class taken
separately; and, above all, by a scale of accomplishments in education,
which strengthen the claim to command, even amongst that part of the
soldiery least capable of appreciating such advantages. In France again,
where no proper aristocracy now exits, there is, however, a gentry,
qualified for leading; the soldiers have an entire reliance on the
courage of their officers. But in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, at the
period of Napoleon, the soldiers knew to a certainty that their officers
could not be depended on; and for a reason absolutely without remedy,
viz. that in Spain, at least, society is not so organized by means of
the press locally diffused, and by social intercourse, as that an
officer's reputation could be instantaneously propagated (as with us)
whithersoever he went. There was then no atmosphere of public opinion,
for sustaining public judgments and public morals. The result was
unparalleled; here for the first time was seen a nation, fourteen
millions strong, so absolutely palsied as to lie down and suffer itself
to be walked over by a body of foreigners, entering in the avowed
character of robbers. Colonel Napier, it is true, has contradicted
himself with regard to the value of the guerillas; alternately
ridiculing then as an imbecile force, and yet accrediting them as
neutralizers of regular armies, to an enormous amount. But can a more
deplorable record be needed of Spanish ignominy, than that a nation,
once the leader of Europe as to _infantry_ and military skill, should,
by mere default of an intrepid gentry, be thrown upon the necessity of a
brigand force? Equally abject was the state of Portugal. Let any man
read the French general Foy's account of the circumstances under which
Junot's van, separated by some days' march from the rest of the army,
entered Lisbon in 1807. The rural population of Portugal, in most
provinces, is a fine athletic race; and foreigners take a false estimate
of this race, from the depraved mob of Lisbon. This capital, however, at
that time, contained 60,000 fighting men, a powerful fortress, and ships
in the river. Yet did Junot make his entry with 6000 of the poorest
troops, in a physical sense, that Europe could show. Foy admits, that
the majority were poor starveling boys, who could scarcely hold their
muskets from cold and continual wet, hurried by forced marches, ill fed,
desponding, and almost ripe for the hospital. Vast crowds had assembled
to see the entry. "What!" exclaimed the Portuguese, "are these little
drowned rats the _élite_ of Napoleon's armies?" Inevitably, the very
basest of nations, would, on such an invitation to resistance, have
risen that same night, whilst the poor, childish, advanced guard was
already beaten to their hands. The French officers apprehended such an
attempt, but nothing happened; the faint-hearted people threw away this
golden opportunity, never to be retrieved. And why? Because they had no
gentry to lead, to rally, or to counsel them. The populace in both
countries, though miserably deteriorated by the long defect of an
aristocracy whom they could respect, were still sound at the heart; they
felt the whole sorrow of their own degradation; and that they would have
fought, was soon proved in the case of the Portuguese, when we lent them
officers and training; as it was proved also thirty years afterwards in
the case of the Spaniards, when Don Carlos, in a time of general peace,
obtained good officers from every part of Europe. Each country was
forced into redeeming itself by the overflowing upon it of a foreign
gentry. And yet, even at the moment of profoundest degradation, such was
the maniacal vanity still prevailing amongst the Spaniards, that at one
time the Supreme Junta forwarded the following proposal to the British
Government:--Men they had; their own independence of foreign aid, in
that sense, they had always asserted; money it was, and not armies,
which they needed; and they now proposed an arrangement, by which the
Spanish armies, as so notoriously the heroes of Europe, should be
rendered universally disposable for the task of facing the French in the
field, whilst the British (as confessedly unequal to duties so stern)
should be entrusted with the garrison duty of the fortresses. "_Illâ se
jactet in aulâ Anglia_;" and, since the help of the English navy (which
really _was_ good) would be available as to the maritime fortresses,
doubtless England might have a chance for justifying the limited
confidence reposed in her, when sheltered from the fiercer storms of war
by the indomitable lions of Ocana. It is superfluous to say, that the
gratitude of Spain, at the close of the war, was every thing that ought
to have been expected from this moonstruck vanity at its opening.
Such are the results for nations, when they betray to the whole world an
aristocracy bankrupt of honour, emasculated, and slothful. Spoliators so
reckless as Napoleon, are not always at hand for taking advantage of
this domestic ruin; but it is impossible that a nation, absolutely rich
as Spain was in the midst of her relative poverty, can advertise itself
for centuries as a naked, defenceless waif, having neither leaders nor
principles for organizing a resistance, but that eventually she will
hear of a customer for her national jewels. In reality, Spain had been
protected for 150 years, by the local interposition of France; had
France not occupied the antechamber to the Peninsula, making it
impossible for any but a maritime power to attack Spain in strength,
Madrid would have echoed to the cannon of the spoiler, at least a
century before the bloody 3d of May 1808.[6] In the same way, Austria
has furnished for centuries a screen to the Italian Peninsula. Yet, in
that case, the want of unity amongst so many subdivisions that were
independent states, might be pleaded as an excuse. Pitiable weakness
there was in both cases; and "to be weak is to be miserable;" but
degradation _by_ degradation, universal abasement of the national
energies, as an effect through wilful abasement as a cause; this
miserable spectacle has been exhibited in mellow maturity by no
Christian nations but those of Spain and Portugal. Both have degenerated
into nations of poltrons, and _from_ what ancestors? From those who once
headed the baptized in Europe, and founded empires in the other
hemisphere.
------"Into what depth thou see'st,
From what height fallen!"------
So that, if this gloomy shadow has crept over luminaries once so bright
through the gradual eclipse of their aristocracies, we need no proof
more pathetic or terrific of the degree in which great nations, with the
whole burden of their honour and their primary interests, are dependent,
in the final extremity, upon the quality of their gentry--considered as
their sole natural leaders in battle.
[Footnote 6: To say the truth, during the Marlborough war of the
Succession, and precisely one hundred years before Murat's bloody
occupation of Madrid, Spain presented the same infamous spectacle as
under Napoleon; armies of strangers, English, French, Germans, marching,
and counter-marching incessantly, peremptorily disposing of the Spanish
crown, alternately placing rival kings upon the throne, and all the
while no more deferring to a Spanish will than to the yelping of village
curs.]
With this previous indication of the unrivalled responsibility pressing
upon aristocracies, it is our purpose to dwell a little upon those
accidents of advantage arising out of constitution, and those
differences of quality, experimentally made known to us in a thousand
trials, which sum and express the peculiarities of the British nobility
and gentry.
This first point, as to the constitution of our aristocracy, the basis
on which it reposes cannot be better introduced than by a literary fact
open to all the world, but never yet read in its true meaning. When it
became advisable, after the violent death of Charles I., that some
public exposure should be applied to the past disputes between the
Throne and the Parliament, and some account given of the royal
policy--the first question arose naturally upon the selection of a
writer having the proper qualifications. Two of these qualifications
were found in a French scholar of distinction, Monsieur de Saumaise,
better known by his Latinized name of Salmasius. He was undoubtedly a
scholar of prodigious attainments: and the first or unconditional
qualification for such a task, of great ability and extensive
information, could not be denied to him. Here was a subject fitted to
fix attention upon any writer, and on the other hand, a writer
brilliantly qualified to fix attention upon any subject. Unhappily, a
third indispensable condition, viz.--that the writer should personally
know England--was entirely overlooked. Salmasius had a fluent command of
Latin; and, supported by a learned theme, he generally left a dazzling
impression even upon those who hated his person, or disputed his
conclusions. But, coming into collision with politics, personal as well
as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for
other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed
probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and
scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain
that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen
have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary
war: the very _word_ "_rebellion_," so often applied to it, involves the
error of presuming that in its principles the war was unconstitutional,
and in its objects was finally defeated. Whereas the subsequent
Revolution of 1688-9 was but a resumption of the very same principles
and indispensable purposes under more advantageous auspices--was but a
re-affirmation of the principle votes from 1642 to 1645. The one capital
point of a responsibility, virtual though not formal, lodged in the
crown, and secured through a responsible ministry--this great principle,
which Charles I. once conceded in the case of Lord Strafford, but ever
afterwards to his dying day repented and abjured, was at length for ever
established, and almost by acclamation. In a case so novel, however, to
Englishmen, and as yet so unsettled, could it be looked for that a
foreigner should master new political principles, to which on the
Continent there was nothing analogous?[7] This, it may be alleged, was
not looked for. Salmasius was in the hands of a party; and his
prejudices, it may be thought, were confluent with theirs. Not
altogether. The most enlightened of the English royalists were sensible
of some call for a balance to the regal authority; it cannot be
pretended that Hyde, Ormond, or Southampton, wished their king to be the
fierce "_Io el rey_" (so pointedly disowning his council) of Castile, or
the "_L'état? C'est moi_" of France, some few years later. Even for a
royalist, it was requisite in England to profess some popular doctrines;
and thus far Salmasius fell below his clients. But his capital
disqualification lay in his defect of familiarity with the English
people, habits, laws, and history.
[Footnote 7: It may be thought, indeed, that as a resident in Holland,
Salmasius should have had a glimpse of the new truth; and certainly it
is singular that he did not perceive the rebound, upon his Dutch
protectors, of many amongst his own virulent passages against the
English; unless he fancied some special privilege for Dutch rebellion.
But in fact he did so. There was a notion in great currency at the
time--that any state whatever was eternally pledged and committed to the
original holdings of its settlement. Whatever had been its earliest
tenure, that tenure continued to be binding through all ages. An
elective kingdom had thus some indirect means for controlling its
sovereign. A republic was a nuisance, perhaps, but protected by
prescription. And in this way even France had authorized means, through
_old_ usages of courts or incorporations, for limiting the royal
authority as to certain known trifles. With respect to the Netherlands,
the king of Spain had never held absolute power in those provinces. All
these were privileged cases for resistance. But England was held to be a
regal despotism.]
The English aristocracy furnished a question for drawing all these large
varieties of ignorance to a focus. In coming upon the ground of English
institutions, Salmasius necessarily began "verba nostra conari," and
became the garrulous parrot that Milton represents him. Yet, strange it
is, that the capital blunder which he makes upon this subject, was not
perceived by Milton. And this reciprocal misunderstanding equally arose
in the pre-occupation of their minds by the separate principles on
which, for each side, were founded their separate aristocracies. The
confusion between the parties arose in connexion with the House of
Commons. What _was_ the House of Commons? Salmasius saw that it was
contrasted with the House of Lords. But then, again, what _were_ the
Lords? The explanation given to him was, that they were the "noblesse"
of the land. _That_ he could understand; and, of course, if the other
house were antithetically opposed to the Lords, it followed that the
House of Commons was _not_ composed of noblesse. But, on the Continent,
this was equivalent to saying, that the Commons were _roturiers,
bourgeois_--in fact, mechanic persons, of obscure families, occupied in
the lowest employments of life. Accordingly Salmasius wrote his whole
work under the most serene conviction that the English House of Commons
was tantamount to a Norwegian Storthing, viz. a gathering from the
illiterate and labouring part of the nation. This blunder was committed
in perfect sincerity. And there was no opening for light; because a
continual sanction was given to this error by the aristocratic scorn
which the cavaliers of ancient descent habitually applied to the
prevailing party of the Roundheads; which may be seen to this hour in
all the pasquinades upon Cromwell, though really in his own
neighbourhood a "gentleman of worship." But for Salmasius it was a
sufficient bar to any doubt arising, that if the House of Commons were
not nobles, then were they not gentlemen--since to be a gentleman and to
be a _titled_ man or noble, on the Continent, were convertible terms. He
himself was a man of titular rank, deriving his title from the territory
of Saumaise; and in this needy scholar, behold a nobleman of France!
Milton, on the other hand, quite incapable of suspecting that Salmasius
conceived himself to stand on a higher level than an English senator of
the Commons, and never having his attention drawn to the chasm which
universally divides foreign from English nobility, naturally interpreted
all the invectives of Salmasius against the Lower House as directed
against their principles and their conduct. Thus arose an error, which
its very enormity has hitherto screened from observation.
What, then, _is_ this chasm dividing our nobility from that upon the
Continent? Latterly that point has begun to force itself upon the
attention of the English themselves, as travellers by wholesale on the
Continent. The sagacious observers amongst them could not avoid to
remark, that not unfrequently families were classed by scores amongst
the nobility, who, in England, would not have been held to rank with the
gentry. Next, it must have struck them that, merely by their numbers,
these continental orders of nobility could never have been designed for
any thing higher than so many orders of gentry. Finally, upon
discovering that there was no such word or idea as that of gentry,
expressing a secondary class distinct from a nobility, it flashed upon
them that our important body of a landed gentry, bearing no _titular_
honours of any kind, was inexpressible by any French, German, or Italian
word; that upon the whole, and allowing for incommunicable differences,
this order of gentry was represented on the Continent by the great mass
of the "basse noblesse;" that our own great feudal nobility would be
described on the Continent as a "haute noblesse;" and that amongst all
these perplexities, it was inevitable for an Englishman to misunderstand
and to be misunderstood. For, if he described another Englishman as not
being a nobleman, invariably the foreigner would presume it to be meant
that he was not a gentleman--not of the privileged class--in fact, that
he was a plebeian or _roturier_, though very possibly a man every way
meritorious by talents or public services. Whereas, on the contrary, we
English know that a man of most ancient descent and ample estates, one,
in the highest sense, a man of birth and family, may choose, on a
principle of pride, (and not unfrequently _has_ chosen,) obstinately to
decline entering the order of nobility. Take, in short, the well-known
story of Sir Edward Seymour, as first reported in Burnet's _Own Times_;
to every foreigner this story is absolutely unintelligible. Sir Edward,
at the Revolution, was one, in the vast crowd of country gentlemen
presented to the Prince of Orange, (not yet raised to the throne.) The
prince, who never had the dimmest conception of English habits or
institutions, thought to compliment Sir Edward by showing himself aware
of that gentleman's near relationship to a ducal house. "I believe, Sir
Edward," said the prince, "that you are of the Duke of Somerset's
family?" But Sir Edward, who was the haughtiest of the human race,
speedily put an extinguisher on the prince's courtesy by replying, in a
roar, "No, your highness: my lord duke is of mine." This was true: Sir
Edward, the commoner, was of that branch which headed the illustrious
house of Seymour; and the Duke of Somerset, at that era, was a cadet of
this house. But to all foreigners alike, from every part of the
Continent, this story is unfathomable. How a junior branch should be
ennobled, the elder branch remaining not ennobled, _that_ by itself
seems mysterious; but how the unennobled branch should, in some sense
peculiarly English, bear itself loftily as the depository of a higher
consideration (though not of a higher rank) than the duke's branch, this
is a mere stone of offence to the continental mind. So, again, there is
a notion current upon the Continent, that in England titular honours are
put up to sale, as once they really were, by Charles I. in his
distresses, when an earldom was sold for L.6000; and so _pro rata_ for
one step higher or lower. Meantime, we all know in England how entirely
false this is; and, on the other hand, we know also, and cannot but
smile at the continental blindness to its own infirmity, that the
mercenary imputation which recoils from ourselves, has, for centuries,
settled upon France, Germany, and other powers. More than one hundred
and thirty thousand French "nobles," at the epoch of the Revolution, how
did most of them come by their titles? Simply by buying them in a
regular market or bazar, appointed for such traffic. Did Mr St----, a
respectable tailor, need baronial honours? He did not think of applying
to any English minister, though he was then actually resident in London;
he addressed his litanies to the chancery of Austria. Did Mr ----, the
dentist, or Mr R----, the banker, sigh for aristocratic honours? Both
crossed the Channel, and marketed in the shambles of France and Germany.
Meantime the confusion, which is inveterate upon this subject, arose out
of the incompatible grounds upon which the aristocracies of England and
the Continent had formed themselves. For the continental there seemed to
exist no exclusive privilege, and yet there _was_ one. For the English
there existed practically a real privilege, and yet in law there was
_none_. On the Continent, no titled order had ever arisen without
peculiar immunities and powers, extending oftentimes to criminal
jurisdictions; but yet, by that same error which has so often vitiated a
paper currency, the whole order, in spite of its unfair privileges, was
generally depreciated. This has been the capital blunder of France at
all times. Her old aristocracy was so numerous, that every provincial
town was inundated with "comptes," &c.; and no villager even turned to
look on hearing another addressed by a title. The other day we saw a
return from the Legion of Honour: "Such in these moments, as in all the
past," France, it appeared, had already indorsed upon this suspicious
roll not fewer than forty-nine thousand six hundred and odd
beneficiaries. Let the reader think of forty-nine thousand six hundred
Knights of the Bath turned loose upon London. Now _ex adverso_ England
must have some virtual and operative privilege for _her_ nobility, or
else how comes it, that in any one of our largest provincial
towns--towns so populous as to have but four rivals on the Continent--a
stranger saluted seriously by the title of "my lord," will very soon
have a mob at his heels? Is it that the English nobility can dispense
with immunities from taxation, with legal supremacies, and with the
sword of justice; in short, with all artificial privileges, having these
two authentic privileges from nature--stern limitation of their numbers,
and a prodigious share in the most durable of the national property?
Vainly does the continental noble flourish against such omnipotent
charters the rusty keys of his dungeon, or the sculptured image of his
family gallows. Power beyond the law is not nobility, is not antiquity.
Tax-gatherers, from the two last centuries, have been the founders of
most titled houses in France; and the _prestige_ of antiquity is,
therefore, but rarely present. But were it otherwise, and that a
"noblesse" could plead one uniform descent from crusaders, still, if
they were a hundred thousand strong--and, secondly, had no
property--and, thirdly, comprehended in their lists a mere gentry,
having generally no pretensions at all to ancient or illustrious
descent, they would be--nothing. And exactly on that basis reposes the
difference between the Continent and England. Eternally the ridiculous
pretence of being "noble" by family, seems to claim for obscure
foreigners some sort of advantage over the plain untitled Englishman;
but eternally the travelled Englishman recollects, that, so far as this
equivocal "nobility" had been really fenced with privileges, those have
been long in a course of superannuation; whilst the counter-vailing
advantages for his own native aristocracy are precisely those which time
or political revolutions never _can_ superannuate.
Thus far as to the constitution of the British nobility and those broad
popular distinctions which determine for each nobility its effectual
powers. The next point is, to exhibit the operation of these
differential powers in the condition of manners which they produce. But,
as a transitional stage lying between the two here described--between
the tenure of our aristocracy as a casual principle, and the popular
working of our aristocracy as an effect--we will interpose a slight
notice of the habits peculiar to England by which this effect is partly
sustained.
One marked characteristic of the English nobility is found in the
popular education of their sons. Amongst the great feudal aristocracies
of Spain or of Austria, it was impossible that the heirs of splendid
properties should be reared when boys in national institutions. In
general, there _are_ no national institutions, of ancient and royal
foundation, dedicated to education in either land. Almost of necessity,
the young _graf_ or _fuerst_, (earl or prince,) _conde_ or _duca_, is
committed to the charge of a private tutor, usually a monk. The habits
of continental universities have always been riotous and plebeian; the
mode of paying the professors, who answer to the college tutors of
Oxford and Cambridge, has always been degrading--equally degrading to
them and to literature; whilst, in relation to all academic authority,
such modes of payment were ruinous, by creating a systematic dependence
of the teacher upon the pupil. To this account may be added, that in all
countries, where great elementary schools are wanting, the universities
are improperly used as their substitutes. Consequently these pupils are
too often boys, and not young men, in age; whilst in habits, not
belonging to the aristocracy, they are generally gross, unpolished, and
illiberal. The great bulk are meant for the professions of the land; and
hence, from an early period, the education has been too ecclesiastical
in its cast. Even at this day, it is too strictly professional. The
landed aristocracy resort to such institutions in no healthy
proportions; and the reason lies in their too exclusive dedication to
the _military_ service. It is true that, in the rude concussion given to
all Germany and Spain by the French revolutionary aggressions, many
changes have occurred. In particular, for North Germany, viz. Prussia,
Russian Poland, and Saxony, such a new and vast body has arisen of
_civil_ functionaries, that a new name and classification for this order
has been found necessary amongst British travellers and German
economists. But this change has not commensurately affected the German
universities. The military character still overshadows the professional.
The law is in no esteem, and leads to no political consideration. The
church is in the same degradation. The German pastor is too essentially
humble in his social condition to present any resistance to feudal or
military arrogance. A German clergyman is not, in that emphatic sense
which makes itself felt amongst ourselves, a gentleman. The rural pastor
of Germany is too often, in effectual weight of character, little more
than the "Amen" clerk of our English establishment. If he is treated
courteously, as amongst very elevated persons he is, this concession he
owes to _their_ high bred refinement, and not to any dignity which
clothes himself. _There_ we speak of the reformed churches, whether
Calvinist, Lutheran, or the new syncratistic church, manufactured by the
present government of Prussia. But in Popish countries, the same
tendency is seen on a larger scale: the whole ecclesiastical body,
parochial or monastic, retires from the contests of life; and fails,
therefore, to contribute any part of the _civil_ resistance needed for
making head against the military profession. On the other hand, in
England, through the great schools of Eton, Harrow, &c., children even
of ducal families are introduced to public life, and to popular
sympathies, through the discipline of what may be called miniature
republics. No country on earth, it is rightly observed by foreigners,
shows so much of aristocratic feeling as England. It cannot, therefore,
be denied--that a British duke or earl at Eton, and more especially in
his latter stages when approaching the period of his majority, is the
object of much deference. Entering upon the time when practically he
becomes _sui juris_, he has far too much power and influence to be
treated with levity. But it is equally true, that a spirit of republican
justice regulates his childish intercourse with his fellow _alumni_: he
fights battles on equal terms with any of them, when he gives or
receives offence. He plays at cricket, he sails or rows his boat,
according to known _general_ regulations. True, that his private tutor
more often withdraws a patrician boy from the public sports: but, so
long as he is a party of them, he neither is, nor, from the nature of
such amusements, could be indulged with any special immunities. The
_Condes_ and _Ducas_ of Spain, meantime, have been uniformly reared at
home: for this we have the authority of Spanish economists, as also of
many travellers. The auspicious conductor of the young grandee's
education are usually his mother's confessor and his mother's
waiting-women. Thence comes the possibility that a Spanish prince should
have degraded himself in the eyes of Europe as a sempster and
embroiderer of petticoats. Accordingly, the highest order of the Spanish
nobility is said to be physically below the standard of their
countrymen, in a degree too apparent to escape general notice; whilst in
the same relations our own nobility has been generally pronounced the
finest _animal_ race amongst us.
Another great feature in the system of our English training, is the
severe separation of children from servants. Many are the families of
mere English gentry, totally removed from the nobility, who never permit
their children to enter the servants' hall nor the kitchen. And the
probable remark upon so rigorous a separation, which an inconsiderate
person will make, that it is founded upon aristocratic arrogance,
happens to be in the very teeth of the truth. We shall content ourselves
with saying, that the comfort as well as benefit of both parties were
promoted by such an arrangement; whilst, so far from arguing hauteur, it
was the high civil condition of the English servant, which, by forcing
respect from his master, first widened the interval between the two
ranks, and founded a wholesome repulsion between them. In our own times,
we have read descriptions of West India planters admitting the infant
children of their slaves to play and sprawl about their saloons: but
now, since the slave has acquired the station of a free man, and (from
the fact of not having won this station meritoriously, but passively
received it as a boon) is too generally disposed to use it in a spirit
of defiance, does any man expect such scenes for the future? Through the
prevalence of habit, old cases of that nature may happen to survive
locally: but in the coming generation, every vestige of these indulgent
relations will have disappeared in the gloomy atmosphere of jealous
independence. That infant, who had been treated with exemplary kindness
as a creature entirely at the mercy of his master, and the living
monument of his forbearance, will be thrown sternly upon his legal
rights when he has the power of enforcing those rights in so many
instances against his patron. This case, from its abruptness, involves
unamiable features: but the English case had developed itself too
gradually and naturally to be otherwise than purely dignified for both
parties. In the age of Beaumont and Fletcher, (say 1610-1635,) gentlemen
kicked and caned their servants: the power to do so, was a privilege
growing out of the awful distance attached to rank: and in Ireland, at
the opening of the present century, such a privilege was still matter of
prescriptive usage, and too frequently furnished the matter for a
menace. But the stealthy growth of civilization and of civil liberty in
England, moved onwards so surely, under the stimulation of manufacturing
industry, (making menial service a secondary object for the poor,) that
before 1750, a gentleman, forgetting himself so far as to strike a
servant, would have been recalled to better thoughts by an action for
assault. On the Continent, for the very reason that no such rights had
been matured for servants, it was possible to treat them with much more
indulgence: because the relations between the two parties were less
honourable, allowing to the servant nothing in the way of absolute
right; for that very reason, it was possible to treat him as a child who
founds his power upon his weakness. In fact, the whole philosophy on
this subject will be found practically embodied in the household economy
of Rome about the time of Hannibal, as unfolded by Plautus. The
relations of master and servant are there exhibited in a state of
absolute pessimism: any thing worse, it is beyond the wit of men to
imagine. Respect or deference on the part of the slave towards his
master, there is none: contempt more maliciously expressed for his
master's understanding, familiarity more insolent, it is difficult to
imagine. This was in part a tendency derived from republican
institutions: but in part also it rests upon the vicious independence in
the master of all authority founded upon moral forces. Instant physical
coercion, the power of cross, gallows, _pistrinum_, and the domestic
scourge--these were the forces which made the Roman master careless of
verbal disrespect, indifferent to censure, from them whose opinions were
as impotent as those of an infant. The slave, again, on _his_ side, is
described as so thoroughly degraded, that he makes the disfiguration of
his own person by the knout, the _cancellation_ of his back by stripes
and scars--a subject of continual merriment. Between two parties thus
incapacitated by law and usage for manly intercourse, the result was
exactly such by consummation as on many parts of the Continent it still
is by tendency. The master welcomed from his slave that spirit of
familiar impertinence which stirred the dull surface of domestic life,
whilst, at any moment, a kick or a frown could silence the petty battery
when it was beginning to be offensive. Without a drawback, therefore, to
apprehend where excesses too personal or stinging could be repressed as
certainly as the trespasses of a hound, the Plautine master drew from
his servant, without anxiety, the comic services which, in the middle
ages, were drawn from the professional "fool." This original vice in the
constitution of society, though greatly mitigated, in the course of two
centuries from the era of Plautus, by the progress of intellectual
luxury, was one main fountain of that coarseness which, in every age,
deformed the social intercourse of Romans; and, especially, it was the
fountain of that odious scurrility and tongue-license which defeated the
majestic impression else sure to have waited on the grand position of
the senate. Cicero himself was as great a ruffian in his three functions
of oratory, viz. at the bar, in the popular assemblies, and in the
senate--he was as foul a libeller--as malignant--and as plebeian in his
choice of topics--as any "verna" in Rome when sparring with another
"verna." This scandal of Roman society was not, undoubtedly, a pure
product, from the vernile scurrility of which we hear so much in Roman
writers--other causes conspired; but certainly the fluency which men of
rank exhibited in this popular accomplishment of Billingsgate had been
at all times sustained by the models of this kind resounding for ever in
the streets of Rome, and in the purlieus of great mansions. Mr
Coleridge, who had seen nothing but superior amiableness in the familiar
sort of friendship existing between a French gentleman and his servant,
where, in fact, it had survived as a relic from old political
degradations, might consistently proclaim in rapture, when writing to a
lady upon the _Philosophic Dialogues_ of Cicero, "What perfect gentlemen
were[8] these old Romans!" He who suffers a single feature of
amiableness to screen the general misconstruction of social relations,
may easily find a spirit of chivalrous courtesy in what, after all, was
only a self-protecting meanness, applied to one special case of private
intercourse under a brutalizing system applied to all other intercourse
between men of public distinction. It is certain that the prevailing
relations upon the Continent between master and servant, did, before the
French Revolution, and do still, express a vicious structure of society;
they have _repeated_, in other forms, the Roman type of civilisation;
whilst we, with a sterner exterior, have been the first to stamp
respectability upon menial and mechanic labour.
[Footnote 8: And, in reality, this impression, as from some high-bred
courtesy and self-restraint, is likely enough to arise at first in every
man's mind. But the true ground of the amiable features was laid for the
Roman in the counter-force of exquisite brutality. Where the style of
public intercourse had been so deformed by ruffianism, in private
intercourse it happened, both as a natural consequence, and as a
difference sought after by prudence, that the tendencies to such rough
play incident to all polemic conversation (as in the _De Oratore_)
should be precluded by a marked extremity of refined pleasure. Hence
indeed it is, that compliments, and something like mutual adulation,
prevail so much in the imaginary colloquies of Roman statesmen. The
personal flatteries interchanged in the _De Oratore, De Legibus_, &c.,
of Cicero, are often so elegantly turned, and introduced so artfully,
that they read very much like the high bred compliments _ascribed_ to
Louis XIV., in his intercourse with eminent public officers. These have
generally a regal air of loftiness about them, and prove the possibility
of _genius_ attaching even to the art of paying compliments. But else,
in reviewing the spirit of _traffic_, which appears in the reciprocal
flatteries passing between Crassus, Antony, Cotta, &c., too often a
sullen suspicion crosses the mind of a politic sycophancy, adopted on
both sides as a defensive armour.]
Perhaps, however, the one capital force, operating for good upon the
British aristocracy, is--the paramount reference of all accomplishments,
of ambition through all its modes, and of party connexions, to the
public service. This, again, which constitutes a fourth head amongst the
characteristics of English society, may be viewed as both cause and
effect with reference to our civil institutions. Here we regard it as a
cause. It is a startling assertion to make, but we have good reason to
think it true, that, in the last great war with Jacobinism, stretching
through very nearly one whole quarter of a century, beyond all doubt the
nobility was that order amongst us who shed their blood in the largest
proportion for the commonwealth. Let not the reader believe that for a
moment we are capable of undervaluing the pretensions of any class,
whether high or low. All furnished martyrs to that noblest of causes.
And it is not possible that this should be otherwise; because amongst us
society is so exquisitely fused, so delicate are the _nuances_ by which
our ranks play out and in to each other, that no man can imagine the
possibility of an arrest being communicated at any point to the free
circulation of any one _national_ feeling whatsoever. Great chasms must
_exist_ between social ranks, where it is possible for a sentiment of
nationality to be suddenly frozen up as it approaches one particular
class; as a corollary from which doctrine, we have always treated with
derision the scurrilous notion that our rural body of landowners, our
country squires, could, by possibility, differ essentially from the rest
of us. Bred amongst us, educated amongst us, intermarrying with us
indiscriminately, how by any means apparent to common sense should it be
possible for them to maintain an inheritance of separate ignorance,
separate prejudices, or separate purposes, such as interested
manufacturers and trivial satirists assume? On the same principle, it is
not possible that, in questions of elementary patriotism, any palsy
should check the electric movement of the national feelings through
_every_ organ of its social life--except only in the one case where its
organization is imperfect. Let there be a haughty nobility, void of
popular sympathies, such as the _haute noblesse_ of Russia or Hungary is
sometimes _said_ to be, and it will be possible that jealousy on behalf
of privileges should operate so noxiously as to place such a body in
opposition to the people for the sake of what it holds separately,
rather than in sympathy with the people for the sake of what both hold
in common. With us, this is otherwise; the very highest and most feudal
amongst our nobles are associated by common rights, interests, and
subjection to the laws, with the general body of the people. Make an
exception for the right of demanding an audience from the sovereign, for
the right of _entrée_ at St James's, for the right of driving through
the Horse Guards, or for Lord Kinsale's right of wearing his hat in the
royal presence--reckon off the petty discount for privileges so purely
ceremonial, and absolute nothing remains to distinguish the nobility.
For as to the practice of entails, the legal benefit of primogeniture,
&c., these have no more essential connexion with the nobility, than the
possession of land or manorial rights. They are privileges attached to a
known situation, which is open equally to every man not disqualified as
an alien. Consequently, we infer that, the fusion and continuity of our
ranks being perfect, it is not possible to suppose, with respect to a
great patriotic interest, any abrupt pause in the fluent circulation of
our national sympathies. We, therefore, cannot be supposed to arrogate
for the nobility any separate privilege of patriotism. But still we
venture to affirm, that, if the total numbers of our nobility and their
nearest connexions were summed; and if from that sum were subtracted all
officers, being brothers, sons, nephews, of British peers, who laid down
their lives, or suffered incurable wounds in the naval or military
service of their country, the proportion will be found greater than that
upon the aggregate remainder belonging to the rest of the nation. Life
is the same blessing for all ranks alike. But certainly, though for all
it is intrinsically the same priceless jewel, there is in the setting of
this jewel something more radiantly brilliant to him who inherits a
place amongst the British nobility, than to him whose prospects have
been clouded originally by the doubts and fears of poverty. And, at all
events, the libation of blood in the course of the last war was, we must
repeat, on the part of the high aristocracy, disproportionately large.
In that proportion are those men unprincipled who speak of the English
nobility as an indolent class--detached from public employments, and
taking neither share nor interest in the public service. Such
representations, where they are not deliberate falsehoods, point to a
fact which is not uncommon; from the limited number of our nobility, and
consequently the rare opportunities for really studying their habits, it
is easy to see that in sketches of this order, (whether libellous
amongst mob-orators, or serious in novels,) the pretended portrait has
been founded on a vague romantic abstraction of what may be supposed
peculiar to the condition of a patrician order under all political
circumstances. Haughtiness, exclusiveness, indolence, and luxury,
compose the romantic type which the delineator figures to his mind; and
at length it becomes evident to any man, who has an experimental
knowledge of this order, that probably the ancient Persian satraps, or
the omrahs of Hindostan, have much more truly been operatively present
to the describers than any thing ancient or modern amongst the realities
of England. A candid person, who wishes to estimate the true, and not
the imaginary nobles of England, will perceive one fact through the
public journals, viz. that no class takes a more active share in that
sort of the public business which naturally commends itself to their
support. At least one-half of the deliberative meetings connected with
the innumerable charities of London, very many of the public dinners by
which such charities are promoted or commemorated, obtain the benevolent
aid of noblemen as chairmen and presidents. Provincial assemblies for
the same purposes, and, still more frequently, assemblies growing out of
the endless political questions incident to a nation in our
circumstances, receive the same influential countenance. These labours,
by no means slight, added to the evening Parliamentary attendance
through half the year, and the morning attendance on Parliamentary
committees, together with the magisterial duties of many
lords-lieutenant, sufficiently attest that in this point of public
duties, (exercised without fee or compensation,) our own nobility is the
only one in Europe having almost any connexion at all with the national
service, except through the army. Some of this small body are pretty
constantly attached to the cabinet; others act as ambassadors, as
under-secretaries, or as colonial governors. And so far are they from
wishing, apparently, to limit the field for their own exertions, that
the late Dukes of Manchester and Richmond spontaneously extended it, by
giving the countenances of their high stations to the governments of
Canada, and even of Jamaica. A marquis of ancient family has lately
accepted the government of Madras; and gradually, as our splendid
colonies expand their proportions, it is probable that many more of them
will benefit at intervals, (in their charities and public works,) from
the vast revenues of our leading nobles acting as their governors. Add
to these the many cases of junior nobles who sit in the House of
Commons; of those who keep alive the public spirit of great provinces by
standing costly contested elections; of those professionally pursuing
the career of arms in the naval or land service; and then, collating all
this activity with the very limited extent of our peerage taken even
with their families, not the very bigotry of democracy will deny that
the characteristic energy of our nation is faithfully reflected from its
highest order.
Is there a feature in foreign circles odious beyond all others? It is
the air of pretence, the craving after effect, the swell, the system of
coquetting with accomplishments, the tumid character of _bravura_, which
characterises the principle, and (to borrow an affected word from
connoisseurs of art) the _motivo_ of their social intercourse. Is there
a feature of manners in the English nobility, absolutely inimitable by
art, and renewing for ever the impressions of simplicity and truth? It
lies in that winning retirement from the artificial, the studied, the
theatrical, from all jealousy of design or collusive deplay, which good
sense and chastity of taste have suggested to them, as the sole style of
demeanour on a level with their dignified station. Continental society
is bad by its ideals. In the execution, there may be frequent
differences, moderating what is offensive in the conception. But the
essential and informing principle of foreign society is the scenical,
and the _nisus_ after display. It is a state of perpetual tension;
while, on the other hand, the usual state of English society, in the
highest classes, is one of dignified repose. There is the same
difference in this point between the two systems of manners, as between
the English and French tone of national intercourse, in the matter of
foreign relations. In France, when the popular blood is up, nothing is
to be heard but bounce, menace, and defiance; for England, all the
hurricanes of foreign wrath that ever blew, could not disturb her lion
port of majestic tranquillity. But when we distinguish between what is
English and what is foreign, it becomes proper that we should say more
specifically what it is that we mean by the term "foreign;" what compass
we allow to that idea. It is too palpable, and for many reasons, that
the French standard of taste has vitiated the general taste of the
Continent. How has this arisen? In part from the central position of
France; in part from the arrogance of France in every age, as pretending
to the precedency amongst the kingdoms of Christendom; in part from the
magnificence of the French kings since the time of Louis XII.--that is,
beginning with Francis I.; and in part, since the period 1660-80, from
the noisy pretensions of the French literature, at the time creating
itself, followed by that natural consequence of corresponding
pretensions for the French language. Literature it was that first opened
to the language a European career; but inversely the language it was
that subsequently clenched and riveted the diffusion of the literature.
Two accidents of European society favoured the change. Up to the
restoration of our Charles II., diplomacy had been generally conducted
in Latin. Efforts had been made, indeed, as early as Cardinal
Richelieu's time, to substitute French. His pupil, Mazarine, had
repeated the attempt; and Cromwell had resolutely resisted it. But how?
Because, at that period, the resistance was easy. Historians are apt to
forget that, in 1653, there was no French literature. Corneille, it is
true, was already known; but the impression which he had as yet made,
even upon Paris, did not merit the name of a _popular_ impression--and
for this decisive reason, that, as yet, Louis XIV. was a boy. Not until
seven years later, did he virtually begin to reign; whilst, as France
was then constituted, nothing could be popular which did not bear the
countersign and _imprimatur_ of a king and his court. The notion,
therefore, adopted by all historians of English literature, (_not_
excluding the arrogant Schlegel,) that Charles II., on his restoration,
laid the foundation of a "French school," being already nonsense by the
very tenor of the doctrine, happens also to be chronologically
impossible. English writers could not take for a model what as yet had
no collective existence. Now, until the death of Charles II., no French
literature could be said to have gathered or established itself; and as
yet no ostentation of a French literature began to stir the air of
Europe. By the time, however, that Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau,
Bossuet, and Fontenelle, had begun to fix the attention of foreign
courts upon the French language, a necessity, no longer to be disguised,
for some modern language as the common organ of diplomacy, had made
itself universally acknowledged. Not only were able negotiations
continually neutralized by ignorance or unfamiliar command of the Latin;
but at last, as the field of diplomacy was daily expanding, and as
commerce kept ahead of all other interests, it became simply impossible,
by any dexterity of evasions and compromises, to make a dead language do
the offices of negotiation without barbarism and reciprocal
misunderstanding. Now was commencing the era of congresses. The
Westphalian congress, in 1648, had put up with Latin; for the interests
which it settled, and the boundaries which it counterbalanced, were
political and general. The details of tariffs were but little concerned.
But those times were passing away. A modern language _must_ be selected
for international treating, and for the growing necessities of
travellers. French probably would, by this time, have gained the
distinction at any rate; for the same causes which carried strangers in
disproportionate numbers to Paris--viz. the newly-created splendour of
that capital, and the extensive patronage of the French kings--must have
commensurately diffused the knowledge of the French language. At such a
critical moment, however, we cannot doubt that the French literature
would give a determining impulse to the choice. For besides that the
literature adapts itself beyond all others to the classes of society
having little time for reflection, and whose sensibilities are scattered
by dissipation, it offers even to the meditative the high quality of
self-consistency. Springing from a low key of passion, it still
justifies its own pretensions to good taste, (that is, to harmony with
itself and its own principles.) Fifty years later, or about the middle
of the eighteenth century, we see a second impulse given to the same
literature, and therefore to the same language. A new race of writers
were at that time seasoning the shallowest of all philosophies with
systematic rancour against thrones and Christianity. To a military (and
therefore in those days ignorant) aristocracy, such as all continental
states were cursed with, equally the food and the condiment were
attractive beyond any other. And thus, viz. through such accidents of
luck operating upon so shallow a body of estimators as the courtiers and
the little adventurers of the Continent, did the French literature and
language attain the preponderance which once they had. It is true, that
the literature has since lost that advantage. Germany, the other great
centre of the Continent, has now a literature of her own, far more
extensive, and better fitted for her peculiar strength and weakness. But
the French language, though also drooping, still holds its ground as the
convenient resource of lazy travellers and lazy diplomatists. This
language, acting through that literature, has been the engine for fusing
the people of the Continent into a monotonous conformity to one standard
of feeling.
In this sense, and with a reference to this deduction, we ascribe unity
to the foreign system of manners and social intercourse. Had every state
in Europe been resigned to her own native temper and habits, there could
have been no propriety in talking of "foreign" manners, as existing by
way of antithesis to English. There must have been as many varieties of
what might be called "foreign," as there happen to be considerable
kingdoms, or considerable territories insulated by strong natural
boundaries, or capital cities composing separate jurisdictions for the
world of manners, by means of local differences continually ripening
into habits. But this tendency in Europe to break up and subdivide her
spirit of manners, was withered and annihilated by the unity of a French
taste. The ambition of a French refinement had so thoroughly seized upon
Germany, and even upon the Vandalism of arctic Sweden, by the year 1740,
that in the literature of both countries, a ridiculous hybrid dialect
prevailed, of which you could not say whether it were a superstructure
of Teutonic upon a basis of French, or of French upon a basis of
Teutonic.[9] The justification of "foreign," or "continental," used as
an adequate antithesis to English, is therefore but too complete.
[Footnote 9: In the days of Gottsched, a German leader about 1740, who
was a pedant constitutionally insensible to any real merits of French
literature, and yet sharing in the Gallomania, the ordinary tenor of
composition was such as this: (supposing English words substituted for
German:) "_I demande_ with entire _empressement_, your _pardon_ for
having _tant soit peu méconnu_, or at least _egaré_ from your orders,
_autrefois_ communicated. _Faute d'entendre_ your ultimate _but_, I now
confess, _de me trouver_ perplexed by _un mauvais embarras_."--And so
on.]
Having thus explained our use of the word "foreign," we put it to any
considerate man, how it should have been possible that any select tone
of society could grow up amongst a body so comprehensive and so
miscellaneous as the _soi-disant_ nobility of continental states? Could
it be expected that 130,000 French "nobles" of 1788, needy and squalid
in their habits as many of them were, should be high-bred gentlemen? In
Germany, we know that all the watering-places are infested with
black-leg gamblers, fortune-hunters, _chevaliers d'industrie_, through
all varieties of this category. Most of these bear titles of baron,
compte, &c. Are they spurious titles? Nobody knows. Such is the
obscurity and extent of an aristocracy multiplying their numbers in
every generation, and resting upon no basis of property, that it is
equally possible for the true "baron" to lie under suspicion as a
pretender, and for the false one to prosper by imposture. On the other
hand, who could hope to pass himself off for six weeks as an English
earl? Yet it is evident, that where counterfeit claims are so easy, the
intrusion of persons unqualified, or doubtfully qualified, must be so
numerous and constant that long ago every pure standard of what is noble
or gentlemanly, must have perished in so keen a struggle and so vast a
mob. Merely by its outrageous excess numerically, every continental
"noblesse" is already lowered and vitiated in its tone. For in vast
bodies, fluctuating eternally, no unity of tone can be maintained,
except exactly in those cases where some vulgar prejudice carries away
all alike by its strength of current.
Such a current we have already noticed in the style of scenical effort
manifested by most foreigners. To be a "conteur," to figure in
"proverbs," to attitudinize, to produce a "sensation"--all these are
purposes of ambition in foreign circles. Such a current we have noticed
in the general determination of the Continent towards French tastes; and
_that_ is a worse tendency even than it used to be, for the true
aristocracy of France is gone for ever as it formerly existed in the
_haute noblesse_; and the court of a democratic king is no more equal to
the task of diffusing good manners, than that of the American or Haytian
president. Personally, the king and his family might be models of high
breeding; but the insolence of democracy would refuse the example, and
untrained vulgarity would fail even in trying to adopt it.
Besides these false impulses given to the continental tone of society,
we have noticed a third, and that is the preposterous value given
amongst foreigners to what is military. This tendency is at once a cause
of vulgarity and an exponent of vulgarity. Thence comes the embroidery
of collars, the betasseling, the befrogging, the flaunting attempts at
"costuming." It is not that the military character is less fitted to a
gentlemanly refinement than any other; but the truth is, that no
professional character whatsoever, when pushed into exclusive esteem,
can continue to sustain itself on the difficult eminence of pure natural
high breeding. All professions alike have their besetting vices,
pedantries, and infirmities. In some degree they correct each other when
thrown together on terms of equality. But on the Continent, the lawyer
and the clergyman is every where degraded; the senator has usually no
existence; and the authentic landed proprietor, liberated from all
duties but the splendid and non-technical duties of patriotism, comes
forward at foreign courts only in thee character of a military officer.
At some courts this is carried so far, that no man can be presented out
of uniform. Has the military profession, on the other hand, benefited by
such partiality? So far from it, that, were the continental armies
liable to that sort of _surveillance_ which our own Horse Guards
exercises over the social morals of the officers, we do not believe that
one of those armies could exist for five years. The facts placed beyond
denial by the capture of foreign officers' baggage, by the violated
parole of honour, and by many other incidents of the late war, combine
to prove the low tone of gentlemanly honour and probity in the ill-paid
armies of the Continent.
Our purpose has been, to insist on the capital patriotic uses to which
so splendid an aristocracy as ours _has_ been applied, and will be
applied, so long as it is suffered to exist undisturbed by the growing
democracy (and, worse than _that_, by the anarchy) of the times. These
uses are principally four, which we shall but indicate in a few words.
First, it is in the nobility of Great Britain that the Conservative
principle--which cannot but be a momentous agency wheresoever there is
any thing good to protect from violence, or any thing venerable to
uphold in sanctity--is chiefly lodged. Primogeniture and the church are
the two corner-stones upon which our civil constitution ultimately
reposes; and neither of these, from the monumental character of our
noble houses, held together through centuries by the peculiar
settlements of their landed properties, has any power to survive the
destruction of a distinct patrician order.
Secondly, though not _per se_, or, in a professional sense, military as
a body, (Heaven forbid that they should be so!) yet, as always
furnishing a disproportionate number from their order to the martial
service of the country, they diffuse a standard of high honour through
our army and navy, which would languish in a degree not suspected
whenever a democratic influence should thoroughly pervade either. It is
less for what they do in this way, than for what they prevent, that our
gratitude is due to the nobility. However, even the _positive_ services
of the nobility are greater in this field than a democrat is aware of.
Are not all our satirical novels, &c., daily describing it as the
infirmity of English society, that so much stress is laid upon
aristocratic connexions? Be it so: but do not run away from your own
doctrine, O democrat! as soon as the consequences become startling. One
of these consequences, which cannot be refused, is the depth of
influence and the extent of influence which waits upon the example of
our nobles. Were the present number of our professional nobles
decimated, they would still retain a most salutary influence. We have
spoken sufficiently of the ruin which follows where a nation has no
natural and authentic leaders for her armies. And we venture to add our
suspicion--that even France, at this moment, owes much of the courage
which marks her gentry, though a mere wreck from her old aristocracy, to
the chivalrous feeling inherited from her ancestral remembrances. Good
officers are not made such by simple constitutional courage; honour, and
something of a pure gentlemanly temper, must be added.
Thirdly, for all populous and highly civilized nations, it is an
indirect necessity made known in a thousand ways, that some adequate
control should preside over their spirit of manners. This can be
effected only through a court and a body of nobles. And thence it
arises, that, in our English public intercourse, through every class,
(even the lowest of the commercial,) so much of respectful gravity and
mutual consideration is found. Now, therefore, as the means of
maintaining in strength this aristocratic influence, we request every
thoughtful man to meditate upon the following proposition. The class
even of our gentry breeds a body of high and chivalrous feeling; and
very much so by unconscious sympathy with an order above themselves. But
why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely
found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen? It is because,
in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought
to be separated from the strife of the world. The fretful collision with
rivalship and angry tempers, insensibly modifies the demeanour of every
man. But the British nobleman, intrenched in wealth, enjoys an immunity
from this irritating discipline. He is able to act by proxy: and all
services of unpleasant contest he devolves upon agents. To have a class
in both sexes who toil not, neither do they spin--is the one _conditio
sine qua non_ for a real nobility.
Fourthly as the leaders in a high morality of honour, and a jealous
sense of the obligation attached to public engagements, our nobility has
tightened the bonds of national sensibility beyond what is always
perceived. "This is high matter," as Burke says in a parallel case; and
we barely touch it. We shall content ourselves with asking--Could the
American frauds in the naval war, calling sixty-four-gun ships by the
name of frigates, have been suffered in England? Could the American
doctrine of _repudiation_ have prospered with us? Yet are the Americans
Englishmen, wanting only a nobility.
The times are full of change: it is through the Conservative body itself
that certain perils are now approaching patrician order: if _that_
perishes, England passes into a new moral condition, wanting all the
protections of the present.
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