Nobility (social class)

“ But although as a class they had lost political power, the nobility enjoyed many special privileges and had vast influence at court and on the administration of government. Theirs was an unquestioned social position. They secured in the army and in the fleet the choicest places, which gave them large revenues and little to do. Some of the higher nobles had vast incomes from their estates and lived in extravagant luxury. But the nobility almost wholly escaped taxation. [9] They were free from the burden of the corvées, of compulsory military service, and of having soldiers quartered upon them. ”

“ And the huge assemblage embraced the very cream of the nobility, the aristocracy, the rich and exclusive caste of a great people whose Constitution is founded on the equality of men, and who are wont to gather thus annually for a few hours to parade their material vestments and divert their dispirited mentalities under the guise of benefaction to a class for whom they rarely hold a loving thought. ”

“ She has rescued the most of them from some sort of discomfort, and their gratitude is boundless. Like the majority of the nobility, the peasants of France are royalists. The middle class, the bourgeoisie, are the backbone of the republic. ”

“ This is the theory of an aristocracy whose right to its claims must be acknowledged by all, whose supremacy must be borne. But does the practice correspond with the theory? Is the nobility which fills up the foreground of the scene in almost every country in Europe, is it an aristocracy such as I have been describing? No one, master of his senses, can answer yes to this question. The so-called nobility, that is, the class which is distinguished by hereditary titles above the rest of the nation, fulfills not a single one of the conditions of a natural aristocracy. ”

“ One finds readily enough contemporary statements to the effect that, “Although there are no nobles in America, there is a class of men denominated ‘gentlemen,’ who, by reason of their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, or the offices they hold, aspire to a preëminence,” but, the same observer adds, this is something which “the people refuse to grant them.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Classes of Society.—The classes of people were the freemen of noble blood, or the nobility, the common freemen, the freedmen, or half-free, and the slaves.
The class of the nobility was based largely upon ancient lineage, some of whom could trace their ancestry to such a distance that they made tenable the claim that they were descended from the gods. The position of a noble was so important in the community that he found no difficulty in making good his claim to pure blood and a title of reverence, but this in no way gave him any especial political privilege. ”

“ Everything that I have said in regard to the justification of the existence of a superior social class, can be applied to an aristocracy that was originally composed of the most perfect individuals of the race, or of the conquering nation. ”

“ Under an arbitrary government, all ranks and distinctions are confounded. The honour of a nobleman is no more considered than the reputation of a peasant, for, with different liveries, they are equally slaves. ”

“ Owing to the small numbers of the nobility, and the constant need of recruiting its ranks after its losses in battle, it was easy for the wealthy members of the middle class to enter the aristocracy, while, from the nature of its occupations, it was thrown into much closer contact with the natives. ”

“ There is always a class styled the nobility in every nation. But the true nobility in America is that class who have won that distinction by noble deeds; who are great, not in titles and garters of nobility, but in great achievements: not that class who base their right to that title upon the number and character of human beings they may own. ”

“ If you cannot afford to have a nobility, let it die away: grant, as in England, the title of noble to one of a family, and let all the rest be commoners; that is to say, distinguished by no personal privilege whatsoever from the lowest classes of the people. ”

“ But the example of a great commonwealth flourishing here without a privileged class, and of a popular sovereignty combining order with progress, tends, however remotely, to break the spell. Therefore, as a class, the English nobility cannot desire the success of your Republic. Some of the order there are who have hearts above their coronets, as there are some kings who have hearts above their crowns, and who in this great crisis of humanity forget that they are noblemen, and remember that they are men. ”

“ The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. The nobles are courtly, polite, and as refined in manners as those of the same social class in Germany; but the serfs, or those who belonged to the nobles with the soil, before the emancipation, are rude, and not half civilized. ”

“ Most of them are seen turning toward administrative careers, entering the service of the state as members of the councils of justice or finance and aspiring to the noblesse de robe, which, with the aid of fortunate marriages, will land their sons in the circle of the true nobility. As for the new rich of the period, they almost all appear to us like parvenus. ”

“ Those who were able acquired by purchase the rank and privileges of nobles, and in this way had come into existence a nobility9 of office and royal creation, which, although looked down upon by the old nobility of the sword, enjoyed the same pecuniary immunities. Those left on the other side of the line deeply resented the social superiority claimed by the nobility in right of its privileges. ”

“ In order to prevent the nobles from recovering political power, the absolutist monarchs enlisted the services of the faithful middle class, which speedily attained an enviable position in the principal European states. ”

“ It is not for birth, or wealth, or occupation, or any other accidental circumstance, that we ask reverence, but for inherent nobility wrought out in life. This is what should give men rank and titles in a republic. ”

“ Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting musty and cumbersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been already impatient of them. ”

“ There is the fact that nobility is an exclusive privilege which all families do not share; that established distinctions rest upon a false principle, and that the peasant hero does not win fame and have his name inscribed in history like the patrician hero; that the domestic virtues of the workingman are not recorded in a book that is always open to his posterity ”

“ Between the nobility and the throne, there was no middle class, capable of thinking or acting upon any political subject; and the nobility, as a rule, were capable and desirous of no other political training, ideas or aspirations than such as would fit them for the part of useful servants of an emperor whom they adored, and of a system which constituted their country the most peculiar and the least free of any in Europe. ”

“ The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility over men of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. ”

“ The higher, or ancient families, keep themselves as distinct from the inferior, or newly-created nobility, as these do from the citizens: So that it is very difficult for the inferior classes to be in society, or to have their families much connected with those of the superior ranks. And what is of more importance in a political sense, there are certain places of high trust in the government, which cannot be occupied by any but the higher order of nobility. ”

“ When, in the progress of society, nobles cease to be useful and become only drones; when rich men, vulgar in character, can purchase titles of nobility, so that the nobles cease to be regarded as a peculiar and heaven-appointed race; when men from the masses, unennobled, acquire opulence, education, and that polish of manners which place them on an equality with titled men; when men of genius and letters, introduced into the saloons of the nobles, discover their own vast superiority to their ignorant, frivolous, and yet haughty entertainers ”

“ 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. ”

“ A body of nobility is also more peculiarly necessary in our mixed and compounded constitution, in order to support the rights of both the crown and the people, by forming a barrier to withstand the encroachments of both. It creates and preserves that gradual scale of dignity, which proceeds from the peasant to the prince; rising like a pyramid from a broad foundation, and diminishing to a point as it rises. ”

“ In social life there is no artificial distinction of classes; all titles of nobility are forbidden; a few families descended from the chiefs in the War of Independence enjoy a certain pre-eminence, but wealth and, still more, political or literary notoriety constitute the principal claim to social consideration. ”

“ 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 oldest 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. ”

“ When, by virtue of this domestic discipline, a family had maintained itself upright and respected on the same spot for a century, it could easily advance a degree; it could introduce one of its members into the upper class, pass from the plow or trade to petty offices, and from these to the higher ones and to parliamentary dignities, from the four thousand posts that ennoble to the legalized nobility, from the lately made nobles to the old nobility. ”

“ The abolition of the old, and the formation of a new nobility, composed chiefly of men who had risen from inferior military situations, has had a most pernicious effect on the general manners of the nation. The chief or sole use of a hereditary nobility in a free country, is to keep up a standard of dignity and elegance of manner, which serves as a model of imitation much more extensively than the middling and lower ranks are often willing to allow, and has a more beneficial effect on the national character, than it is easy to explain on mere speculative principles. ”

“ It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. ”

“ In earlier times, when feudal society was young, the nobility had performed a very real service as the defenders of the peasants against foreign enemies and likewise against marauders and bandits of whom the land had been full. ”

“ Then came the great upheaval of society, and during the first period of the Revolution, when even to be suspected of nobility was a crime, haste was made to erase, or omit, all the signs of noble descent which had hitherto been so readily assumed, and in their places to insert caps of liberty and Republican mottoes, such as Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, or La Liberté ou la Mort. ”

“ Now, sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the middle class in England look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my country. ”

“ The anomaly of a ruling class without legal sanction or titular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; titles have been created for our great "untitled nobility"—mock titles which have speedily assumed a serious import and meaning. ”

“ It was by conduct such as this, my fellow citizens, that your ancestors made themselves and the republic renowned. Our nobility, relying on their forefathers' merits, tho totally different from them in conduct, disparage us who emulate their virtues and demand of you every public honor, as due, not to their personal merit, but to their high rank. ”

“ They have not become woolly, nor do they wear horns, but the nobility are eternally bellowing forth the astounding deeds of their ancestors, whilst the muttonish middle classes bleat a timorous approval.... ”

“ The nobles, the merchants, the business class, gave him so hearty a reception as to convince him that real talent such as his must in the end rise superior to all the conjoined efforts of faction, public prejudices, and the evil passions of inferior minds. ”