Magnate

“ The larger the holdings of the magnate, the more effectual and expeditious will be his work of absorbing the holdings of the smaller capitalist-employer, and the more precipitately will the latter yield his assets to the new claimant. ”

“ Magnan′imously. [L. magnanimitas—magnus, great, animus, the mind.]
Magnate, mag′nāt, n. a noble: a man of rank or wealth. [Fr. magnat, a title of Hungarian and Polish nobles—L. magnas, magnatis, a prince—magnus, great.]
Magnes, mag′nēz, n. (Spens.) the magnet. ”

“ The magnate naturally wanted his price for these commodities, and the only price that would satisfy him was the poor man's land. So many poor men surrendered the ownership of their land, receiving it back to be held by them as tenants on condition of rendering various services to the landlord, such as ploughing his land, reaping his crops, and other work. ”

“ Take an imaginary procession of magnates, financial, political, artistic, royal, or noble, dress them in plain citizen’s garb, and then send in a child to pick out the prizes among them, to distinguish the bishop from the chancellor, the diplomatist from the banker, the king from the scholar. ”

“ I have no intention of asking the reader to accompany me in all these expeditions—for though pleasant in reality, they might be tedious in description—but I wish to introduce him to some typical examples of the landed proprietors. Among them are to be found nearly all ranks and conditions of men, from the rich magnate, surrounded with the refined luxury of West-European civilisation, to the poor, ill-clad, ignorant owner of a few acres which barely supply him with the necessaries of life. ”

“ As usual, the money poured in unto him.
He now with the highest magnates took rank,
For money he had in every bank.
But magnates, like others, sometime must die,
And in the same earth with poverty lie. ”

“ When the magnates of the people, arrayed in this massive style, and reeking with oily fat, swagger about with sovereign contempt amongst their fellow mortals, they are only as grand as the slimy diplomatists, solemn and stiff, who strut along without vouchsafing to unlock one secret from their wary lips. ”

“ The nobles were divided into princes, prelates, barons of the kingdom, and magnates, whose rights, though in some trifling respects different, were yet so much akin as to permit their being treated as political equals. Next to them, yet claiming the essential privileges of nobility, came the king's chief retainers, with the holders of fiefs under the princes and prelates, and the principal retainers of the magnates; and finally, a humbler class followed, who, corresponding to our territorial but untitled aristocracy, are now content to bear the appellation of eidelmen, or gentry. ”

“ And if this was true more or less of all the higher and wealthier nobility, particularly of the younger members, it [Pg 128] cannot be said that the lower classes, or the less wealthy, were at all behind-hand in following the example of their betters.
The King himself hated display, though he did not despise a becoming state and magnificence when occasion required; but those who were attached to his Court, or to the retinue of the great lords, spiritual and temporal, delighted to imitate the young magnates as far as they could. ”

“ Si l’on appelle aucune chose femme qui aura baron, et il la veut deffendre, il la peut deffendre de son cors, &c. Gradually the word seems to have come to mean a “strong or powerful man,” and thus generally “a magnate.” ”

“ When impecunious counts, lords, dukes and princes, having wasted the inheritance originally obtained by robbery, and perpetuated by robbery, are on the anxious lookout for marriages with great fortunes, and the American money magnates, satiated with vulgar wealth, aspire to titled connections, the arrangement becomes easy. ”

“ The new owners of these broad domains were, for the most part, either the rising statesmen—the novi homines who had been nursed under Wolsey, and grown to manhood in the storms of the Reformation, Cromwell, Russell, Audeley, Wriothesley, Dudley, Seymour, Fitzwilliam, and the satellites who revolved about them; or else city merchants, successful wool-dealers, or manufacturers: in all cases the men of progress—the men of the future—the rivals, if not the active enemies, of the hereditary feudal magnates. ”

“ Local magnates were formerly permitted the tone of small sovereigns, and even when they were from home they were not required to come down from the heights of their overweening dignity and exclusiveness. ”

“ And this is true, no matter how much the politicians, the commercial magnates, kings, princes, and potentates may preen themselves on their human importance, pointing to their laws, their factories, their palaces, all the evidences of their temporal power. ”

“ A mist of moral enthusiasm was wrapped about the crude realities of commercial enterprise, and the acquisition of wealth by private persons was disguised in the trappings of national magnificence. Much honest enthusiasm was thus generated which commercial and financial magnates turned to their advantage. ”

“ It is only at elections, though managed by politicians, that the people are a power. Socially, the magnates are the rich. It is money which in these times all classes combine to worship. If this be questioned, see the adulation which even colleges and schools of learning pay to their wealthy patrons or those from whom they seek benefits. The patrons of the schools in the Middle Ages were princes and nobles; but these princes and nobles bowed down in reverence to learned bishops and great theological doctors. ”

“ Great is the magic of precedent, and like the rebellious Helots, who cowered at the sight of their masters’ whips, those who are used to dragging the social chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths whenever the bit is offered them.”
The magnates, as has been shown, brook small interference with prevailing customs. Their near dependents, retainers, and “poor relations” think as they think, and feel as they feel; and the great majority of the professional moulders of opinion, drawing their inspiration from above, preach and teach as the magnates would have them. ”

“ Though neither the Federal nor the State Government has power to confer titles, the magnates do so. They see that dukes and other peers are created in Europe, and that the partners in the big, wealthy firms over there, are called "merchant princes", and so to outdo them, they arrogate to themselves a still higher title. Hence there are railroad kings, copper kings, tobacco kings, etc. It is, however, manifestly improper and incongruous that the people should possess a higher title than their President, who is the head of the nation. ”

“ The nobility, the great landed proprietors, the yeomanry, the lesser farmers, all the intermediate ranks who might oppose a check to the power of a tyrannical prince, are nearly annihilated. The property of these classes, but more particularly of the nobility, has been subdivided and distributed among the peasants; become their own, it has, no doubt, been much better managed, for it is their immediate interest that not an acre of waste ground should remain. They till it with their own hands, and, without any intermediate agents, they draw the profits. ”

“ I have known a wealthy merchant, who had closed his mercantile concerns, vested his money in land, and retired into the country, become the founder of a noble race; and I have seen him freely admitted into the society of the most illustrious families. Many persons also of ignoble blood have been advanced to the honours of nobility by the favour of their sovereign, which they have merited by their warlike achievements. ”

“ A sporting duke may fancy that the state depends on the House of Lords, but the engineer sees, that every stroke of the steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, fills it with tenants; doubles, quadruples, centuples the duke's capital, and creates new measures and new necessities for the culture of his children. Of course, it draws the nobility into the competition as stockholders in the mine, the canal, the railway, in the application of steam to agriculture, and sometimes into trade. ”

“ For the sons of merchants and tradesmen who have inherited large fortunes from their fathers, by purchasing an estate and living in the country on its produce, compose an inferior order of nobility, and transmit to their sons all the honours of the aristocracy: and those who have lived in the service of the great barons, by receiving from their liege lords a grant of land, attain to the rank of nobility. ”

“ Political offices are chiefly monopolized by men of famous birth or great riches. The king, the chief officer of the land, must surpass all others in wealth, and the pomp and circumstance which comes thereof, and in aristocracy of birth. He is not merely noble but royal; his right to rule is not at all derived from the people, but from his birth. Thus he has the two essentials of aristocratic influence, birth and wealth, not merely in the heroic degree, but in the supreme degree. ”

“ In a sense it includes several modern royalties, for the crown in several modern constitutional states is a corporation sole, and the monarch the unique, unlimited, and so far as necessity goes, quite functionless shareholder. He may be a heavy-eyed sensualist, a small-minded leader of fashion, a rival to his servants in the gay science of etiquette, a frequenter of race-courses and music-halls, a literary or scientific quack, a devotee, an amateur anything—the point is that his income and sustenance have no relation whatever to his activities. ”

“ How is one to get rich quick if unexpected fortunes are no longer to made out of passing monarchs? If I were a king, I wouldn't dream of opening my mouth to anyone without first putting some money in his hand. — Simple peasant! Would to God it were a simple matter to pay off all my debts. [2] — But that's what comes of these modern sentimental depictions of country life. Even a powerful king like that is jealous of our sort. ”

“ Can any one say, the king, or conqueror, after his grant, may by his power of conqueror take away all, or part of the land from the heirs of one, or from the other during his life, he paying the rent? ”

“ The Prince enquired, “Who will buy thee of me, seeing thou art a very old man? Nay, do thou rather sell me, inasmuch as the demand for me will be more.” But the king replied, “An thou wert king, thou wouldest require service of me.” Accordingly the youth obeyed his father’s bidding and taking him, carried him to the slave-dealer and said, “Sell me this old man.” Said the dealer, “Who will buy this wight, and he a son of eighty years?” [337] Then quoth he to the king, “In what crafts art thou cunning?” ”

“ We had our monarchy, our hierarchy and our aristocracy,—God be praised for the benefits which have been derived from all three, and God in his mercy continue them to us! but we had no plutarchy, no millionaires, no great capitalists to break down the honest and industrious trader with the weight of their overbearing and overwhelming wealth. ”

“ For those who will have a King, are bound to allow him Royal maintenance, by providing Revenues for the CROWN, Since it is both for the Honour, Profit, and Safety too of the People, to have their King Glorious, Powerful, and abounding in Riches, besides, we all know the Lands and Goods of many Subjects may be ofttimes Legally taken by the King, either by Forfeitures, Escheat, Attainder, Outlawry, Confiscation, or the like. ”

“ As it is not a kingdom without subjects and government, so he is not a king without revenues.... The revenue of the Crown is the very essential part of the Crown, and he who rendeth that from the king pulleth also his crown from his head, for it cannot be separated from the crown. ”

“ These monarchs of all they surveyed probably never connected an idea of proprietorship on their part of the scenes over which they roamed, any more than does the fisherman on the banks or shoals of the sea, or one who daily enjoys the view of the changing aspects of the horizon or the sky, associate with it any claim of his own beyond the right of transient use. ”

“ Of merchant-marring rocks?
SALERIO.
Not one, my lord.
Besides, it should appear, that if he had
The present money to discharge the Jew,
He would not take it. Never did I know
A creature that did bear the shape of man
So keen and greedy to confound a man.
He plies the Duke at morning and at night,
And doth impeach the freedom of the state
If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants,
The Duke himself, and the magnificoes
Of greatest port have all persuaded with him,
But none can drive him from the envious plea
Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond. ”

“ But yet there is not any thing amongst civil affairs more subject to error, than the right valuation and true judgment concerning the power and forces of an estate. The kingdom of heaven is compared, not to any great kernel or nut, but to a grain of mustard-seed: which is one of the least grains, but hath in it a property and spirit hastily to get up and spread. ”

“ At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officials—dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, centenarii—who had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. ”

“ There are also (no doubt) counsellors and governors which may be held sufficient (negotiis pares [equals in business] ) , able to manage affairs, and to keep them from precipices and manifest inconveniences; which nevertheless are far from the ability to raise and amplify an estate in power, means, and fortune. But be the workmen what they may be, let us speak of the work; that is, the true greatness of kingdoms and estates, and the means thereof. An argument fit for great and mighty princes to have in their hand ”

“ But give me the man who can be a duke without being born to it. Give me the man who can go ahead in trade without capital; who can begin the world with a quick pair of hands, a quick brain to govern them, and can end with a capital. ”