British aristocracy

“ In England nobility is apt to be confounded with the peculiar institution of the British peerage. Yet nobility, in some shape or another, has existed in most places and times of the world’s history, while the British peerage is an institution purely local, and one which has actually hindered the existence of a nobility in the sense which the word bears in most other countries. Nor is nobility the same thing as aristocracy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Will the aristocracy of England—the most wealthy and powerful aristocracy in the world—voluntarily, and without a mighty struggle, divest themselves of one of their chief sources of power in the state. ”

“ Moreover, admission to the ranks and privileges of the nobility could be secured by men of wealth who had no ancestral claims. This upstart aristocracy was despised by the ancient noblesse and doubly hated by the toiling masses. In England the aristocracy was one of the strongest bulwarks of the constitution and of the social order: in France it was a constant source of irritation and dislike and an invitation to revolution. ”

“ The aristocratick scale, whilst loaded with wealth, talents, perpetuities, and superstition, preponderated against the democratick, lightened with ignorance. In England the first being unladed by alienations, and the second rendered more weighty by wealth and knowledge, an approach towards a balance begat evils, which drove that country for refuge into the aristocracy of the third age, composed of paper, patronage and armies. ”

“ The real origin of your nation is the key to the present relations between you and the different parties in England. This is the old battle waged again on a new field. We will not talk too much of Puritans and Cavaliers. The soldiers of the Union are not Puritans, neither are the planters Cavaliers, But the present civil war is a vast episode in the same irrepressible conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy; and the heirs of the Cavalier in England sympathize with your enemies, the heirs of the Puritan with you.
The feeling of our aristocracy, as of all aristocracies, is against you. ”

“ The English people are among the greatest of the historic races, but the British monarchy, with its mediæval pretensions, its humbug of a throne and a crown, its subordinated ranks of society, its military and naval despotism, and its vast skein of tentaculæ stretching to every valuable thing in the world,—is perhaps the one thing that modern civilization should most dread and put away from the field of its desires. ”

“ What share in these great works had that faculty of Labour whose sacred claims we now urge, but which for centuries have been passed over in contemptuous silence? No, my lord, we call upon you to decide this question by the result. The Aristocracy of England have had for three centuries the exercise of power; for the last century and a half that exercise has been uncontrolled; they form at this moment the most prosperous class that the history of the world can furnish: as rich as the Roman senators, with sources of convenience and enjoyment which modern science could alone supply. ”

“ With some sad exceptions, I think that Great Britain has reason to be proud of her aristocracy. I do not speak now of those gaudy flaunting personages, of either sex, who, by their excesses or eccentricities, are eternally obtruding themselves, their manners, dress, and equipage, upon the offended ear and eye of the public; but of those who occupy their exalted sphere in simplicity, in calmness, and in unobtrusive dignity and virtue. I am no flatterer or idolater of the nobility. ”

“ On the other hand, and here is the point of argument, the real aristocracy of England for the last hundred years has been an aristocracy of the foremost, ablest, and worthiest men of the nation, and with few exceptions the social and pecuniary rewards have been bestowed both by the State and by public appreciation on the master-spirits of the time in the best sense. Brilliant statesmanship, wisdom on the bench, the surgeon’s skill, the banker’s sound discernment, genius in literature and art, when signally contributed by the individual, have won him fame and fortune. ”

“ In England the state takes charge of the education of another class, the nobility and gentry; that is, of young men of ancient and historical families, the nobility, and young men of fortune, the gentry. England is an oligarchical state; her government an aristocracy, the government of all by a few, the nobility and gentry, for the sake of a few, and in the name of a king. There the foundation of power is wealth and birth from a noble family. The union of both takes place in a wealthy noble. There, nobility is the blossom of the state ”

“ It is no wonder vulgar men, who travel here and eat our dinners, laugh at this form of vulgarity. Wiser men see its cause, and prophesy its speedy decay. Every nation has its aristocracy, or controlling class: in some lands it is permanent, an aristocracy of blood; men that are descended from distinguished warriors, from the pirates and freebooters of a rude age. The nobility of England are proud of their fathers' deeds, and emblazon the symbols thereof in their family arms, emblems of barbarism. Ours is an aristocracy of wealth, not got by plunder, but by toil, thrift, enterprise ”

“ An aristocracy which could be repleted from the plebeian ranks of the middle classes of society, upon whose members titles were bestowed, not because of their readiness to respond to the needs of the privy purse of a monarch, but because they had assumed leading and important positions in relation to England's honor and power, was an aristocracy that did not become archaic or degenerate. ”

“ Commerce, or the wealth and influence thence arising, has become the mainspring of England's energies the chief bulwark of her social institutions, the pillar of her govern ment. When ecclesiastical power fell, and the feudal aristocracy became gradually enfeebled, and when the steady advance of the people seemed to make democracy (perhaps revolutionary democracy) the sure end of the social movement, there was gradually being formed in this country a new aristocracy, more potent than any, whether ecclesiastical or hereditary, that had preceded the aristo cracy of wealth. ”

“ It would be most unworthy of a student of history to preach vulgar hatred of an historic aristocracy. The aristocracy [Pg 756] of England has been great in its hour, probably beneficent, perhaps indispensable to the progress of our nation, and so to the foundation of yours. ”

“ But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character, the British Empire—that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the sun utterly declines to set—would have fallen into decay and debility, as a second-class Power. ”

“ Hundreds of years ago, in the ancient boroughs of England, a genius for self-government began to display itself, and it is that to which the greatness of our empire is mainly to be attributed. We not only got the noblest of all Imperial gifts—self-government—but we got more than that. Great Britain gave us another noble Imperial gift—the magnificent continent we possess, with all its resources and all its wealth. ”

“ Until all of England's aristocracy shall be gathered to their fathers—until the collection in Westminster be completed—the strife of the people with that of the aristocracy of birth will not be settled, and the alliance of the citizens of France with England will remain doubtful. ”

“ It will be no such easy task to uproot the aristocracy of England.
With much more force, at least with much more plausibility, the noble Lord and several other members on the other side of the House have argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existing system has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! How eminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and arms! ”

“ Few persons who contemplate the present state of the British empire, its astonishing rise to greatness in the space of less than a century—the general, it may be said universal jealousy with which it is regarded, and the perilous pinnacle on which it now stands, will deny the justice of this observation. ”

“ At present, however, though the aristocratic element is still strong in Great Britain and Germany so far as the enjoyment of public office is concerned, the term aristocracy has become almost entirely social in meaning, and is used loosely and in a great variety of combinations to denote a select few—as aristocracy of birth, of wealth, or of brains. ”

“ I know, and I affirm fearlessly, that the continuance of the present system will ruin the landed interest of the country. We shall go first, but noble lords and the aristocracy of England will be the next to follow. It is impossible that the aristocracy of the country can be supported without the tenantry. ”

“ In any case the spirit of the whole upper class can be described as increasingly new. The English aristocracy, which is the chief creation of the Reformation, is undeniably entitled to a certain praise, which is now almost universally regarded as very high praise. ”

“ England's polity is, and for ages has been, aristocratical. Not even the passage of the Reform Bill materially lessened the power of the aristocracy; and the declaration of Earl Grey, the father of the measure, that it would be found the most aristocratical of measures,—as he was one of the most aristocratical of men,—does not seem so absurd now as it appeared four-and-thirty years since, when we note how difficult it now is to lower the franchise in Britain. ”

“ In spite of lapses and defects, it is an undeniable historical fact that these are the principles which have been wrought out and applied in the administration of the British Empire during the nineteenth century. They are not vague and Utopian dreams; they are a matter of daily practice. ”

“ How ruinous the results can be if that resolve be the outcome of a narrow, proud, and self-complacent understanding, the fortunes of the British Empire in the years 1774–83 may testify. Those who love to dwell on the “might-have-beens” of history, may imagine what would have happened if the mild and wavering King of France had ruled Great Britain, and if our pertinacious sovereign had99 been in the place of the hapless Bourbon whose vacillations marred everything in the memorable spring of 1789. ”

“ But if a word be uttered on this subject, the whole aristocracy is up in arms, and succeeds in putting down the opposition; for in England it is the aristocracy that governs, and for which the Government acts. They repeat the favourite adage, that, if the least stone of the old foundation be touched, the whole fabric will fall to the ground. This is devoutly re-echoed by the multitude; consequently reform is stopped, and abuses are suffered to increase and multiply. ”

“ The aristocracy of England may be divided into three distinct classes,—that of family, of wealth, and of talent,—all powerful in their order. The one which ranks the last should hold its place with the first, for it originally produced it ”

“ The aristocracy of England is not the "ancient regime" of France— selfish, oppressive and corrupt—nor a turbulent and barbarous oligarchy like that of Poland in the seventeenth, or the South in the nineteenth century ”

“ As the typical instance of a convenient convention that I am inclined to think is now reacting very badly upon our future, the Crown of the British Empire, considered as the symbolical figurehead of a system of hereditary privilege and rule, serves extremely well. ”

“ The faint traces discernible in England, of the aristocracy of the second age, evidently disclose a revolution in its qualities, which must have been produced by a cause; and when we perceive, that the present nobility no longer awaken the jealousy of the king, or attract the attention of the people, it behoves us to ascertain this cause, in order to understand what aristocracy is ”

“ In order to discover whether the aristocracy of paper and patronage, is a good organ for expressing the will of the sovereign we have agreed upon, let us return to England, Am consider, whether the revolution, which finally destroyed the aristocracy of the second age, and established that of the third, has placed the government in the hands of the wealth, virtue and talents of the nation, or subjected it to the influence of public opinion. ”

“ Thus British institutions—the institutions of national self-government, which are peculiarly British in origin—have played a main part both in determining the character of the British Empire and in bringing about its wonderful expansion. The more the British Empire has grown the more freedom has been established on the face of the earth. ”

“ A feudal king and his barons, possessed of nearly all the lands of a country, were a minority, constituting a landed aristocracy, living upon the rest of a nation. But this species of aristocracy being destroyed in England by a division of lands (though individual landed fortunes there, still greatly exceed any here) a new species of aristocracy became necessary to sustain monarchy in that country, in which a landed interest has been so far from keeping an ascendancy, that it has been unable to get a just share of representation. ”