England is in fact, to the American, always a realm of faery, in its
political and social constitution. It must be owned, concerning the
government by family, that it certainly seems to work well. That
justifies it, so far as the exclusion of the immense majority from the
administration of their own affairs can be justified by anything;
though I hold that the worst form of graft in office is hardly less
justifiable: that is, at least, one of the people picking their pockets.
But it is the universal make-believe behind all the practical virtue of
the state that constitutes the English monarchy a realm of faery. The
whole population, both the great and the small, by a common effort of
the will, agree that there is a man or a woman of a certain line who
can rightfully inherit the primacy amongst them, and can be dedicated
through this right to live the life of a god, to be so worshipped and
flattered, so cockered about with every form of moral and material
flummery, that he or she may well be more than human not to be made a
fool of. Then, by a like prodigious stroke of volition, the inhabitants
of the enchanted island universally agree that there is a class of them
which can be called out of their names in some sort of title, bestowed
by some ancestral or actual prince, and can forthwith be something
different from the rest, who shall thenceforth do them reverence, them
and their heirs and assigns, forever. By this amusing process, the realm
of faery is constituted, a thing which could not have any existence in
nature, yet by its existence in fancy becomes the most absolute of human
facts.
It is not surprising that, in the conditions which ensue, snobbishness
should abound; the surprising thing would be if it did not abound. Even
with ourselves, who by a seven years’ struggle burst the faery dream a
century ago, that least erected spirit rears its loathly head from the
dust at times, and in our polite press we can read much if we otherwise
see nothing of its subtle influence. But no evil is without its
compensating good, and the good of English snobbishness is that it
has reduced loyalty, whether to the prince or to the patrician, from a
political to a social significance. That is, it does so with the upper
classes; with the lower, loyalty finds expression in an unparalleled
patriotism. An Englishman of the humble or the humbler life may know
very well that he is not much in himself; but he believes that England
stands for him, and that royalty and nobility stand for England. Both
of these, there, are surrounded by an atmosphere of reverence wholly
inconceivable to the natives of a country where there are only
millionaires to revere.