Aristocracy

“ We still love monarchy and aristocracy, together with that picturesque and dutiful order which rested on local institutions, class privileges, and the authority of the family. We may even feel an organic need for all these things, cling to them tenaciously, and dream of rejuvenating them. ”

“ Their serenity, their high spirit, their power of haughty resistance,—the great qualities of an aristocracy, and the secret of its distinguished manners and dignity,—these very qualities, in an epoch of expansion, turn against their possessors. Again and again I have said how the refinement of an aristocracy may be precious and educative to a raw nation as a kind of shadow of true refinement ”

“ If, however, the use of my jack-knife afforded me pleasure, the idea of its possession was no less a source of enjoyment. I was, for the time being, a little prince among my fellows,—a perfect monarch. Let no one exclaim against aristocracy; were we all perfectly equal to-day, there would be an aristocracy to-morrow. Talent, judgment, skill, tact, industry, perseverance, will place some on the top, while the contrary attributes will place others at the bottom of fortune's ever-revolving wheel! ”

“ What really pleases me, I suppose, is the notion of a genuine aristocracy, an aristocracy as revolutionary as anarchists in their attitude to morals and such things, an aristocracy that’s flung up out of [718] this mad world, as a sort of exquisite flower of chance and accident, an aristocracy that is worth all this damned confusion! ”

“ An aristocracy which is merely an aristocracy because it is "old"—whether it is an aristocracy of families, or of races, or of species—has already ceased to be an aristocracy in any sound meaning of the term. ”

“ From the mischiefs of a wild democracy, the progress has ever been to the dominion of an aristocracy; and the word aristocracy, fatally includes the boldest and most turbulent citizens, who rise by their crimes, and call themselves the best men in the state. ”

“ The aristocracy, I mean to tell you, is the league, the combination of those who are bent on consuming without producing, living without working, occupying all public posts without being able to fill them, and usurping all honours without having earned them—that is the aristocracy. ”

“ Americans, not having any king to give them titles of nobility, have created an aristocracy for themselves. This aristocracy boasts as yet no dukes, marquises, earls, or barons, but the blue blood is there, it appears—Dutch blood—and that is sufficient. ”

“ A landed aristocracy, thus founded, might be indefinitely enlarged and thus afford not merely society for the lonely summits of the hierarchy, but a comfortable intercalation as the seat of the throne, removed by one stratum from the restless foundation elements. ”

“ But the new state of society should contain an aristocratic element, not the aristocracy of birth or of the money-chest, not even the aristocracy of intellect, but the aristocracy of character, of the will and of the soul. ”

“ Alongside of these the spiritual princes, as entirely dependent on choice and election for their dignities, formed an aristocracy, not only of birth, but of science and the intellectual culture of the age—in short, an aristocracy of merit. ”

“ If in an aristocracy the people be virtuous, they will enjoy very nearly the same happiness as in a popular government, and the state will become powerful.—Montesquieu.
An aristocracy is the true, the only support of a monarchy. ”

“ ARISTOCRACY.--An aristocracy, sometimes called oligarchy, is a government in which the supreme authority is vested in a privileged few, distinguished by their wealth and social position.
The privileged class are usually called nobles. They are above the common people in rank and bear titles of honor. ”

“ I do not speak of them, sir; I allude to our insolent, overbearing aristocracy, who, sprung from the people as they are, recruited from the ranks of trade or law, look down upon the really ancient blood of the land, the untitled nobility. ”

“ If we call the rule of many men, who are all of them good, aristocracy, and the rule of one man royalty, then aristocracy will be better for states than royalty, whether the government is supported by force or not, provided only that a number of men equal in virtue can be found. ”

“ On the ruins of the hereditary aristocracy of the Gentiles we have set up the aristocracy of our educated class, and over all the aristocracy of money. We have established the basis of this new aristocracy on the basis of riches, which we control, and on the science guided by our wise men. ”

“ But was this great material gain of the people to be accompanied by a corresponding spiritual advancement? Was man to become the chief object of reverence in this wonderfully expanding industrial empire? If not, all this progress was deceptive, and nobody could predict how soon our very superiority should be turned to the advantage of that aristocracy which had perverted so many things in the republic. ”

“ As the State is an aristocracy, its most important spiritual function is the production of aristocrats; each, noble family transmits the full power of its blood only to a single person—the eldest son; of the highest form, the royal, only one is supposed to be born in a generation, only one who receives and transmits in full the blood royal.
As the nobility are the blossom of the State, great pains must be taken with the education of those persons born of patrician or wealthy families. ”

“ He only contends for an aristocracy from a supposition that it must possess this mass, and be the only organ of its will; I acknowledge the sovereignty of these qualities, deny their residence in a minority compressible into an aristocracy, and contend for a different organ. ”

“ When philosophers show us how the democratic element of society is growing, and must grow stronger, we are asked what will be the good, by and-by, of our moderate throne and aristocracy, which we now contemplate so thankfully? ”

“ The representatives of the People have broken into the sacred inclosure of "the Government," and new men, with new opinions, have usurped the places of an ancient aristocracy, and its antiquated principles. ”

“ But give, in a republic, an aristocracy ever so little chance, and it works and plots and sneaks and bullies and sneers itself into place, and you find democracy out of doors. Is it good that the aristocracy should so triumph?—that is a question that you may settle according to your own notions and taste ”

“ But we need the wise within this living, moving whole, this never-ceasing action and interaction, and this truth is the basis of our new conception of aristocracy. Democracy is not opposed to aristocracy—it includes aristocracy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fact of aristocracy, with its two weapons of wealth and manners, is as commanding a feature of the nineteenth century, and the American republic, as of old Rome, or modern England. The reason and influence of wealth, the aspect of philosophy and religion, and the tendencies which have acquired the name of Transcendentalism in Old and New England ”

“ 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. ”

“ Others chose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy. When one man excelled all others, the government was put into his hands under the name of monarchy. ”

“ An ancient aristocracy, with real functions, political and social, and sustained and replenished by the people, forms with us a true link between the throne and the people at large. To this organisation we find ourselves now owing the dignity and security of our sovereign, in days when scarcely any other monarch in Christendom knows what security is. ”

“ If there be one intellect vastly superior to any others, the constitution of the state will soon become a monarchy; if there be more than one or two greatly above the rest, you will have an aristocracy, and the natural order, as far as I have seen in the world, will be the monarch representing the highest intellect and most powerful will; an aristocracy representing those next in mental powers ”

“ His idea of an aristocracy was, that it was the government of the few over the many. An aristocratic body, like the screw in mechanics, working its way by slow degrees, and holding fast whatever it gains, should ever be suspected of an encroaching tendency. The purse-strings should never be put into its hands. ”

“ This, with property and official position, gradually developed the sentiment of aristocracy, which has so deeply penetrated modern society, and antagonized the democratical principles created and fostered by the gentes. ”

“ We see monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, rising side by side and one after another, the changes being regulated in each community by its past experience and its special interests in the immediate present. ”

“ In the history of our forefathers, we recognise three political beasts, feeding at different periods upon their lives, liberties and properties. Those called hierarchical and feudal aristocracy, to say the worst of them, are now the instruments of the third. ”

“ So the world will, some day or other. We are opening our eyes fast. Men begin to ask themselves what the use of an aristocracy is. That is the test, sir.’
‘I think it not very difficult to demonstrate the use of an aristocracy,’ mildly observed the Duke. ”

“ That royalty, or aristocracy for that matter, moves on unselfconscious heights is one of the fictions of fiction. The aristocracies of Europe [192] may not, in the manner of the American, carry their ancestors like a bunch of chips on their shoulder, but like royalty, they are “simple and unaffected” only so long as they are not expected to be humble and are not approached by the wrong sort of people. ”

“ We have seen in our own time a great reaction in favour of monarchy, aristocracy, andecclesiasticism, a reaction almost entirely noble in its instinct, and dwelling almost entirely on the best periods and the best qualities of the old régime. ”

“ The form of government natural to such infant states as the expansion of the original social monad, the family, is a loose but not unkindly mixture of monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy—the aristocracy being always the preponderating element. ”

“ The old interests of aristocracy—the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war—faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization. ”

“ The aristocracy we were talking about was the very highest, the great families of Europe, not impoverished, not converted, not liberalized, the most distinctive and specialized class of all classes, for which even ambition itself does not exist among the usual incentives to activity and regulators of conduct. ”

“ In an aristocracy there are two classes: the people to be governed, and the governing class, the nobility which is to govern. This nobility may be moveable, and depend on wealth ; or immoveable, and depend on birth. In the Southern States the nobility is immoveable, and depends on colour. ”

“ An aristocracy of lordly and chivalrous heroes is bound in time to create a great democracy by the reflection of their character in the mass, and the idea of the divine right of kings is succeeded by the idea of the divine right of the people. ”

“ The family connection between the house of France and the Empire was dissolved; and the struggle between the old condition of society and the rising intelligence [234] of the peoples—which is the great characteristic of the Middle Ages—took a more defined form than before: aristocracy assumed its perfected shape of king and nobility combined for mutual defence on one side, and on the other the towns and great masses of the nations striving for freedom and privilege under the leadership of the sympathizing and democratic Church ”

“ What do you mean by aristocracy?”
“The ascendency of the better man. In a rude State the better man is the stronger; in a corrupt State, perhaps the more roguish; in modern republics the jobbers get the money and the lawyers get the power. ”