Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
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 were8 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.
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.