Although I had been several times at St. Stephen’s, I never, until quite lately, got into the House of Lords. A young connexion, who happens to be travelling in Europe, and myself, have, however, just made a visit to the Hospital of Incurables. Several members of this house have offered to procure permission for me, but it has always been in a way that has rendered the civility any thing but a favour. It is a marked fault in English manners, that they extend the factitious system, by which every concession of politeness of this nature has the appearance of being, sought, to strangers.[16]
I may say the same thing of the House of Commons, into which I have had a dozen offers of admission beneath the gallery, though but once in a way that I did not feel it to be a humiliation to accept. The exception was a case of thoroughly gentlemanlike attention, and I record it with the greater satisfaction.
As I am writing with the intention to supply comparisons of national manners, I will relate a recent occurrence that took place at Paris. A party of American travellers arrived at the door of the Chamber of Deputies, and, in the absence of all other means of getting in, they took the bold measure of sending their cards to the president, with a request to be admitted, and immediately had convenient places assigned them. I do not say I would imitate this course, but it is impossible not to admire the courtesy which overlooked the mistake.
There are men who ply about the doors of the two houses of parliament, to show strangers the way into them; for it is almost as much an affair of management and bribery to get into St. Stephen’s chapel, after one is elected, as it is to get the legal return. We contracted with a man at the outer door to deliver us safe in the House of Lords, for three shillings sterling, each. The rogue carried us no farther than the first inner door, however, where he turned us over to one a step above him in dignity, coolly demanding a shilling for his pains. Our new guide carried us through a door or two more, when we reached the real vendor of places. We paid the second guide another shilling, and the stipulated price went into the hands of the regular box-office-man.
I am far from complaining of the practice of paying for these admissions, though the price is too high. Members, you will remember, can grant admissions. It is quite impossible for every one to be present, and in a town like London, the half crown may be a very healthful check, both morally and physically. The legislative body that has not the power to clear its hall, would become contemptible. The publicity of congress is only commanded through its journals, the admission of strangers being purely a matter of favour. Here the latter are present, only, by a fiction, as indeed they are sometimes absent; for frequently when ordered to withdraw, they do not budge. The same principles substantially regulate the proceedings of congress and of parliament, though there exists one difference between them, that is founded on a fundamental distinction in the governments. In congress the vote is taken openly, in parliament it is not. It is a great pity that, while we admit of this affinity in forms, we do not always perceive the essential difference that exists in substance.
You know, already, that the hall of the House of Lords is divided into three divisions—that around the throne, that which contains the peers, and that which is set apart for the public. I should think the latter, which is termed below the bar, might hold two or three hundred people, standing. There are no seats, and even the reporters are compelled to write on their knees, or to sit on the floor. Luckily for them, there is little, in general, to report.[17] There is also a small area around the fireplace which appears to be a no-man’s-land, for I heard a commoner ask a peer, lately, whether it was permitted for the members of the other house to occupy it, and the answer was an admission of ignorance, though the peer rather thought it was. The members of the commons, however, usually stand around the throne. Mr. Wortley, a gentleman I had seen in America, was standing on the steps of the throne to-night, while his father, Lord Wharncliffe, made a speech.
We found a thin house, and plenty of space below the bar. The Duke of Wellington was on the ministerial bench, and not far from him was my dinner acquaintance, the Bishop of ——, in his lawn sleeves. With the exception and that of another bishop, who entered in the course of the evening, besides the chancellor and the other officers of the house, I saw no one that was not in ordinary attire. All but the bishop and the latter wore their hats, and they wore their precious wigs. The chancellor looked like a miller with his head thrust through his wife’s petticoat. As for my bishop, he appeared fidgety and out of his place.
Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey and Lord Holland, were all in their places, but neither said any thing but the first, who spoke for a few minutes. When we entered, I do not think there were twenty peers in their seats, though the number doubled at a later hour. These twenty were mostly clustered around the table, and their meeting strongly resembled that of an ordinary committee. The Marquis of Salisbury, a descendant of Burleigh, was on his feet when we came in, discussing some point connected with the game-laws. I doubt if his great ancestor knew half as much of the same subject. The tone was conversational and quiet, and, altogether, I never was in a public body that had so little the air of one. I could not divest myself of the idea of a conseil de famille, that had met to consult each other, in a familiar way, about the disposition of some of their possessions, while the members of the house who were listening, resembled the children who were excluded by their years.
Although one so seldom hears the term “my lord” in the world, it was pretty well bandied among the speakers to-night. They pronounced it “my lurds,” the English uniformly sounding the possessive pronoun in question more like the Italians than we do, so that it makes “mee lurds.” I was a good deal puzzled, when I first arrived here, to account for many abuses of the language, in the middling classes, and which sometimes are met with in the secondary articles of the public prints. “Think of me going without a hat,” is a sentence of the sort I mean. It is intended to say, “Think of my going, &c.;” but, from a confusion between the sound and the spelling, the personal pronoun is used, by illiterate people, instead of the possessive. This species of illiteracy, by the way, extends a good way up English society.
I take it, the polite way of pronouncing this word is by a sort of elision—as m’horse, m’dog, m’gun, and that my horse, my dog, my gun, the usual American mode, and me horse, me dog, me gun, the English counterpart, are equally wrong; the first by an offensive egotism, and the last from offensive ignorance. I think more noble peers, however, said “me lurds,” than “m’lurds,” though the formal tone of public speaking is seldom favourable to simple or accurate pronunciation. It usually plays the deuce with prosody, unless one has a naturally easy elocution. The French, in this respect, have the advantage of us, their language having no emphatic syllables. A Frenchman will often talk an hour without a true argument or a false quantity.
Lord Salisbury appeared to have a knowledge of his subject, which, in itself, was scarcely worthy to occupy the time of the peers of Great Britain. I do not mean that game is altogether beneath one’s notice, and still less that the moral enormities to which the English game-laws have given birth, do not require a remedy; but that local authority ought to exist to regulate all such minor interests; first, on account of their relative insignificance, and, secondly, because the reasoning that may apply to one county, may not fitly apply to another.
You may perhaps be ignorant that, by the actual law, game cannot be sold at all in England. My wife was ill lately, and I desired our landlady to send and get her a bird or two, but the good woman held up her hands and declared it was impossible, as there was a fine of fifty pounds for buying or selling game. The law is evaded, however, hares, it is said, passing from hand to hand constantly in London, under the name of lions!
I remember once, in travelling on our frontiers, to have received an apology from an inn-keeper, for not having any thing fit to eat, because he had only venison, wild pigeons, and brook trout. I asked him what he wanted better. He did not know, “but the gentleman had quite likely been used to pork!” Absurd as all this seems, I remember, after serving a season on the great lakes, to have asked for boiled pork and turnips, as a treat. Our physical enjoyments are mere matters of habit, while the intellectual, alone, are based on a rock. The worst tendency we have at home, is manifested by a rapacity for money, which, when obtained, is to be spent in little besides eating and drinking.
A Lord Carnarvon said a few words, and Lord Wharncliffe made a speech, but it was all in the same conversational tone. The peers do not address the chancellor in speaking, but their own body; hence the constant recurrence of the words “my lurds.” The chancellor does not occupy a seat at one end of the area, like a speaker, but he is placed on his woolsack, considerably advanced towards the table.
I should have been at a loss to know the members, but for a plain tradesman-like looking man at my elbow, who appeared to be familiar with the house, and who was there to show the lions to a country friend. I was much amused by this person’s observations, which were a strange medley of habitual English deference for rank and natural criticism. “There,” said he, “that is Lord L——, and he looks just like a journeyman carpenter.” His friend, however, was too much awe-struck to relish this familiarity.
I was a little disappointed with the physique of the peers, who are, by no means, a particularly favourable specimen of the English gentlemen, in this respect. Perhaps I have never seen enough of them together to form a correct opinion. A Lord A——, whom I met at Paris, told me that his father had taken the trouble to count the pig-tails in the House of Lords, at the trial of the late queen, and that he found they considerably exceeded a hundred. I was aware this body was somewhat behind the age in certain essentials, but I did not know, until then, that this peculiarity extended to that precise portion of the head.
The peers of Great Britain, considered as a political body, are usurpers in the worst sense of the word. The authority they wield, and the power by which it is maintained, are the results neither of frank conquest, nor of legally delegated trusts, but of insidious innovations effected under the fraudulent pretences of succouring liberty. They were the principal, and, at that time, the natural agents of the nation, in rescuing it from the tyranny of the Stuarts, and profiting by their position, they have gradually perverted the institutions to their own aggrandisement and benefit. This is substantially the history of all aristocracies, which commence by curbing the power of despots, and end by substituting their own.
There exists a radical fault in the theory of the British government, which supposes three estates, possessed of equal legislative authority. Such a condition of the body politic is a moral impossibility. Two would infallibly combine to depose the other, and then they would quarrel which was to reap the fruits of victory. The very manner in which the popular rights were originally obtained in England, go to prove that nothing of the sort entered into the composition of the government at the commencement. Boroughs were created by royal charters. Even the peers were emanations of the royal will, and, much as might be expected, the creatures of the king’s pleasure.
In the progress of events, the servants became too strong for their masters. They set aside one dynasty and established another, under the form of law. Since that time they have been gradually accumulating force, until all the branches of government are absorbed in one; not absolutely in its ordinary action, it is true, but in its fundamental power. Parliament has got to be absolute, and the strictly legislative part of it, by establishing the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, has obtained so much control over the part which is termed the executive, as to hold it completely within its control.
An Englishman is very apt to affirm that the President of the United States has more power than the King of England. This he thinks is establishing the superior liberty of his own country. He is right enough in his fact, but strangely wrong in the inference. The government of the United States has no pretension to a trinity in its elements, though it maintains one in its action; and that of Great Britain pretends to one in its elements, while it has a unity in its action. The president has more real power than the king, because he actually wields the authority attributed to him in the Constitution, and the king has less real authority than the president, because he does not exercise the authority attributed to him by the Constitution, even as the Constitution is now explained, different as that explanation is from what it was a century since.
Were the King of England to name a ministry that did not please his parliament, which in substance is pleasing those who hold the power to make members, that ministry could not stand a week after parliament assembled. If the two houses of parliament were composed of men of different interests, or of different social elements, there would still be something like an apparent balance in the composition of the state; but they are not. The peers hold so much political control in the country, as, virtually, to identify the two bodies, so far as interests are concerned. Without this, there would be no harmony in the government, for where there are separate bodies of equal nominal authority in a state, one must openly control the others, or all must secretly act under the same indirect influence; not the influence of a common concern in the public good, for rulers never attend to that, until they have first consulted their own interests, as far as their powers will conveniently allow. In point of fact then, the peers of England and the commons of England are merely modifications of the same social castes.
In looking over the list of the members of the House of Commons, I find one hundred and sixty with those titles which show that they are actually the sons of peers, and when we remember the extent and influence of intermarriages, it would not probably exceed the truth were I to say that more than half the lower house stand, as regards the upper, either in the relation of son, son-in-law, brother, or brother-in-law, nephew, or uncle.[18] But nobility is by no means the test of this government. It is, strictly, a landed, and not a titled aristocracy. There are seventy-four baronets among the commons, and these are usually men of large landed estates. If we take the whole list, we shall not probably find a hundred names that, socially, belong to any other class than that of the aristocracy, strictly so called, or that are not so nearly allied to them in interests, as virtually to make the House of Commons, identical, as a social caste, with the House of Lords. It is of little moment whether these bodies are hereditary or elective, so long as both represent the same set of interests.
The aristocracy of England is checked less by any of the contrivances of the state, than by the extra-constitutional power of public opinion. This is a fourth estate in England, and a powerful estate every where, that, in an age like this perhaps does more than written compacts to restrain abuses. It has even curbed despotism over more than half of Europe. As the influence of public opinion will always bear the impress of the moral civilization of a people, England is better off, in this particular, than most of her neighbours, and it is probably one great reason why her aristocracy has not fleeced the nation more than it has, though I don’t know that it has any thing to reproach itself with, in the way of neglect, on this score.
The perpetuity of the ascendancy of the English aristocracy is a question much mooted just now, and I have frequently heard in private, sturdy and frank opinions on the subject. There are three prominent facts that, I think, must soon produce essential changes in this feature of the English system. In carrying out the scheme of spreading the power of the peers over the commons, as it has been done by personal wealth, individuals of the body have become offensively powerful to the majority of their own order. Influence is getting into too few hands to be agreeable to those, who, having so much, would wish to share in all. This is one evil, and I think when reform does occur, as occur it must, that there will be a great effort to arrest it, when this one point shall have been rectified.
But there is a far more powerful foe to the existing order of things. The present system is based on property, for, with a king without authority, the power of the Lords, unsupported by that of the Commons, would not be worth a straw in this age; and, though land may not be, the balance of power, as it is connected with money, is rapidly changing hands in England. There has arisen, within the last fifty years, a tremendous money-power, that was formerly unknown to the country. Individuals got rich in the last century, where classes get rich now; and instead of absorbing the new men, as was once done, the aristocracy is in danger of being absorbed by them.
It would not be in nature for a large class of men to become rich without wishing to participate in power. It is a necessity in money to league itself with authority. Were it not for the natural antipathy between trade and democracy, the mercantile and manufacturing classes of England would make common cause with the people and change the government at once; but the affluent dread revolutions; the debt of England is a mortgage on the rich; and, most of all, commerce detests popular rights. It is, in itself, an aristocracy of wealth. When the hour comes, however, it will be found struggling to equalize the advantages of money, I think.
The third danger arises from the fictions of the system. No power on earth can resist the assaults of reason, if constantly exposed to them, since it is the language of natural truth. Liberty of the press is incompatible with exclusion in politics, or at least, with an exclusion that proscribes a majority. Neither throne, nor senate, can withstand the constant attacks of arguments that address themselves equally to the sense of right and to the passions of men. The alternatives are to submit, or to repress.
Now, while the aristocracy has been silently and steadily extending its net over England, it has always been with the professions of a monarchy. It was an offence to speak evil of the king, when it was no offence to speak evil of the aristocrats. The law protected a fiction, while it overlooked a reality. It is too late to change. Feeling an indifference to a power that was little more than nominal, the press has been permitted to deal freely even with the throne, of late, and England would not bear a law which denied her the privilege of censuring the aristocrats. The public mind, on this point, appears to be under the influence of a reaction. The French Revolution so far quickened the jealousies of the English government, that prosecutions for sedition were carried to extremes under Mr. Pitt, and now that the danger is abated, something like a licence on the other side has followed.
The church will do more to uphold the present system than the aristocracy, although there are two sides even to the effect of the influence of the church. It sustains and it enfeebles the government, through dissent. It sustains, by enlisting the prejudices of churchmen of its side, and it enfeebles by throwing large masses necessarily into the opposition.[19] On the whole, however, it aids greatly in upholding the present order of things. One of the most distinguished statesmen of this country, observed to me pithily, the other day, that we enjoyed a great advantage in having no established church. I understood him to mean that he found the establishment of England a mill-stone around the neck of reform.
One who should judge of the character of the English aristocracy, by inferences drawn solely from the political system, and from the warnings of history, would not come to a fairer decision, than he who should judge of the condition of democracy in America, by the state of the Grecian and Italian republics. There is much, very much, that is redeeming here, though it belongs rather to incidents of the national facts, than to the effects of purely political causes. As one of the chief of the latter, however, may be mentioned the openness to censure and comment, that has arisen from the fraud of considering the government in theory, and in the penal laws, as a monarchy, when it has so few genuine claims to the character. While this circumstance exposes the real rulers to constant assaults, and, as I think, to ultimate defeat, it has, for them, the redeeming advantage (in some measure redeeming, at least) of putting them on their guard, of admonishing them of their danger, and of checking and correcting the natural tendency to abuses. It is, in fact, a means of bringing the moral civilization and knowledge of the age to bear directly on their public and private deportment. Viewed in the first sense, it is usual, here, to say that the families of the peers are as exemplary as those of any other class of subjects. It is absurd to make any essential distinction between the nobility and the gentry, on such a point, for they are identified in all but the mere circumstance that the former are a titled division of the aristocracy. As between castes, I do not believe there is any essential moral differences, anywhere. Each has the vices and the virtues of its condition, and if leisure and wealth tempt to indulgences, they also supply the means of those higher mental pleasures which do quite as much as preaching, towards restraining evil. Individuals of rank do certainly abuse their privileges, and others profit by their insignificance. There are cases of profligate vice among the English nobility, beyond a question, but, as a whole, I believe they are externally as decent and moral, as the same number of any class in the kingdom. We misconceive the character of aristocracy quite as much as they misconceive the character of democracy. Both are essentially tempered by the spirit of the age. The practice of marrying for worldly views, causes rather more breaches of the marriage vows among the women, than would otherwise be the case, though they are certainly better than many other European nations in this respect. The English say that the world sees the worst of them, in this particular, a sentiment unknown to the women of the Continent, causing their own to elope, when they have yielded to an illicit attachment. I do not believe in either the fact, or the reason. The disclosures prove that they are discovered half the time, and the elopements that are voluntary, probably proceed from the fact that the law allows divorces, and re-marriages, an advantage, if indeed it be one, that is denied catholics. This is the weak side of the morals of the English nobility, among whom there are probably a larger proportion of divorces, than among the same number of any other protestants. The separations, a mensa et thoro, are also comparatively numerous.
I have, first and last, been brought more or less in personal contact, with a large number of the nobility of this realm. I have generally found them well mannered and well educated, and sedulous to please. There is a certain species of conventional knowledge, that belongs in a measure to their peculiar social position, that is diffused among them with surprising equality. I can liken it most to the sort of inherent tastes and tact, that distinguish the children of gentlemen from those who are equally well taught in other respects, but have not had the same early advantages of association, and which frequently render them companionable and agreeable when there is little beneath the surface. Judged by a severer standard, they are like other educated men, of course, though their constant intercourse with the highest classes of a nation distinguished for learning, taste, and research, probably imparts to them as a body, an air of knowledge that is, in some degree, above the level of their true intelligence. Of a good many of those with whom I have even conversed, I know too little to speak with sufficient understanding, but among all those with whom I have, I should find it difficult to name one who has left on my mind the impression of vapid ignorance that so often besets us in our own circles. Something is probably owing to their better tone of manners, which, if it does nothing else, by inculcating modesty of deportment, prevents exposure. On the other hand, I could not mention half a dozen who left behind them the impression of men possessing talents above the ordinary level. Perhaps, however, this is in a just proportion, to their numbers. Lord Grey, I have little doubt, has one of the most masculine and vigorous minds among the peers; and I think it will be found, should he ever reach the upper house, that Lord Stanley will possess one of the acutest.
The English appear to me to encourage a fault in their eloquence, that is common to their literature and their manners. The incessant study of the Roman classics has imparted a taste for a severity of style and manner that is better suited to the comprehensive tongue of the ancients, than to our own ampler vocabulary. From this, or from some other cause, they push simplicity to affectation; or, admitting that there is an unconsciousness of the peculiarity, to coldness. This is observable in their ordinary manners, and in their style of parliamentary elocution; the latter, in particular, usually wanting the feeling necessary to awaken sympathy. As respects the Lord’s, it is rare, I fancy, to hear any thing approaching oratory, the delivery and the language being conversational rather than oratorical. They appear to be afraid of falling into the forensic, as it might detract from a speaker’s glory to have it proved upon him he was a lawyer.
The English nobleman, however, is usually above the miserable affectations of the drilled coldness of the automaton school. He appears to have imbibed a portion of the amenity of the high society of the continent. In this respect the men are better than the women, as our women are said to be better than the men. I think one would apply the term gracieuse to fewer English women than common, though the men of rank merit that of aimable oftener than it is adjudged to them. I have often, quite often, met with English women of winning exterior; but their deportment has almost always appeared to be the result of their feelings; inducing one to esteem, as much as to admire them; and, although one of ordinary capacity most respects this trait, where it is wanting he could wish to find its substitute. In reference to the points of a factitious coldness of manner, and a want of feeling in oratory, I should say the peers, as compared to the class next beneath them, are most obnoxious to the latter charge, and the least to the former.
A day or two after my first visit, I went again to the House of Lords to hear Mr. Brougham speak in the case of an appeal. I found but two peers present, the chancellor, and, I believe, Lord Carnarvon. The former sat on the woolsack buried in flax, as usual, and the latter occupied one of the lateral benches, with his hat on. The appeal was made from a decision of the chancellor, who had ordered that a father should not have the custody of his sons. It was an extraordinary proceeding in appearance, at least, though reflection somewhat lessens its absurdity. In point of fact, owing to a change in the administration, the chancellor from whom the appeal was made, was not the person who now presided, but had not this accidental change intervened, it would have been otherwise. Mr. Brougham spoke several hours, and it would have been irksome to him, indeed, to be compelled to argue, on appeal, a case over again, that had already been presented to the same ears! When one comes to consider the matter, however, he finds that there are many lawyers among the lords, who, if they do not hear the arguments, may read them; and who can rely on their own knowledge in making up their minds, when they come to the vote. The defect was, therefore, one of form rather than one of substance, though it was strangely deficient in appearances, a fault the least likely to occur in this government.