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

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.

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.

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 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.