Were the people of England, free from the prejudices of their actual situation and absolutely without a political organization, assembled to select a polity for their future government, it is probable that the man who should propose the present system, would at once be set down as a visionary, or a fool. Could things be reversed, however, and the nation collected for the same purpose, under the influence of the opinions that now prevail, the proposer of the system that would be very likely to be adopted in the former case, would be lucky if he escaped with his ears. It is safer that facts should precede opinions in the progress of political meliorations, than that opinions should precede facts; though it would be better still, could the two march pari passu. All essential changes in the control of human things, must be attended by one of two species of contests, the struggles of those who would hasten, or the struggles of those who would retard events. The active portion of the former are usually so small a minority, that it is pretty accurate to affirm they are more useful as pioneers than as pilots, while it is in the nature of things that the latter should gradually lose their power by desertions, until compelled by circumstances to yield.
The considerations connected with these truths teach us that reform is generally a wiser remedy than revolution. Still it must be recollected that the progress of things is not always in the right direction. Artificial and selfish combinations frequently supplant the natural tendency to improvement, and a people, by waiting the course of events, might sometimes be the supine observers of the process of forging their own chains. In all such cases, unless the current can be turned, it must be made to lose its influence by being thrown backward.
In continuing the subject of the last letter, I am of opinion that the present system of England is to undergo radical alterations, by the safest of the two remedies, that of reform; a denial of which will certainly produce convulsions. The hereditary principle, as extended beyond the isolated abstraction of a monarch, is offensive to human pride, not to say natural justice, and I believe the world contains no instance of an enlightened people’s long submitting to it, unless it has been relieved by some extraordinary, mitigating, circumstances of national prosperity. The latter has been the fact with England; but, as is usually the case with all exceptions to general rules, it has brought with it a countervailing principle that, sooner or later, will react on the system.
Hitherto, England has had a monopoly of available knowledge. Protected by her insular situation, industry has taken refuge in the island; and, fostered by franchises, it has prospered beyond all former example. The peculiar construction of the empire, in which national character and conquest have been mutually cause and effect, has turned a flood of wealth into that small portion of it, which, being the seat of power, regulates the tone of the whole, as the heart controls the pulsations of the body. This is the favourable side of the question, and on it are to be found the temporal advantages that have induced men to submit to an ascendancy that they might otherwise resist.
The unfavourable is peculiarly connected with the events of the last thirty years. In order to counteract the effects of the French revolution, the aristocracy carried on a war, that has cost the country a sum of money which, still hanging over the nation in the shape of debt, is likely to produce a radical change in the elements of its prosperity. In the competition of industry which is now spreading itself throughout Christendom, it is absolutely necessary to keep down the price of labour in England, to prevent being undersold in foreign markets, and to keep up the prices of food, in order to pay taxes. These two causes united have created an excess of pauperism, that hangs like a dead weight on the nation, and which helps to aid the rivalry of foreign competition. Taking the two together, about one hundred and thirty millions of dollars annually are paid by the nation, and much the greater part as a fine proceeding from the peculiar form of the government; for the sacrifices that were made, were only to be expected from those who were contending especially for their own privileges. As the territories of England were impregnable, no mere monarch could have carried on the system of Mr. Pitt, since the rich would not have submitted to it, and as for the people, or the mass, there would have been no sufficient motive. In order to appreciate these efforts, and their consequences, it will be necessary to consider the vast annual sums expended by Great Britain during the late wars, and then look around for the benefits. One undeniable result is, I take it, that industry is quitting the kingdom, under the influence of precisely the same causes as those by which it was introduced. I do not mean so much that capitalists depart, as they left Flanders, for the scale on which things are now graduated, renders more regular changes necessary, but that the skill emigrates, to avoid the exactions of the state. I may, however, go further, and add that capital also quits the country. It takes longer to subvert the sources of national than of individual prosperity, and we are not to look for results in a day. Still these results, I think, are already apparent. They appear in the moderated tone of this government, in its strong disinclination to war, and, in fact, on an entire change in its foreign policy.
It is quite obvious that the English aristocracy is existing in a state of constant alarm. The desperate expedient of Mr. Pitt, that of undertaking a crusade against popular rights, is already producing its reaction. It is seldom that the human mind can be brought to an unnatural tension on one side, without recoiling to the other extreme, as soon as liberated. Men are constantly vibrating around truth, the passions and temporary interests acting as the weights to keep the pendulum in motion. The result of the present condition of the English aristocracy, is to put them, in a political as well as a social sense, on their good behaviour. Although so great a proportion of the peculiar embarrassments of Great Britain may be traced, with sufficient clearness, to the exclusive features of the government, there probably never has been a period in the history of the nation, when the power of the few has been so undisputed in practice, or its exercise more under the sense of correction.
I have already said that one of the consequences of the forced prosperity that grew out of the system of Mr. Pitt, was to raise up a dangerous social caste, that had no immediate connexion with the government, while it became too powerful to be overlooked. Sir James M‘Intosh, in his History of the Revolution of 1668, has said, that the Constitution attributes the power of creating peers to the king, “either to reward public service, or to give dignity to important offices, or to add ability or knowledge to a part of the legislature, or to repair the injuries of time, by the addition of new wealth to an aristocracy which may have decayed.” Nothing is wanting to the truth of this exposition but to add the words “or any thing else.” Mr. Pitt extended these constitutional motives by including that of neutralising an antagonist wealth, which might become dangerous to the particular wealth already in possession of power. The peerage has been essentially doubled since the accession of George III. In addition to these accessions to the House of Lords, a great number of Irish peers have been created, who are also a species of direct political aristocrats. Social bribes have been liberally dealt out, in addition, by an enormous creation of baronets, of whom there are now near a thousand in the empire.
But this is a mode of maintaining a system, that will soon exhaust itself. Knighthood, except in particular cases, is no longer a distinction for a gentleman, and would be refused by any man of a decided social position, unless under circumstances to which I have elsewhere alluded. The exceptions are in the cases of especial professional merit. A lawyer, an artist, a physician, or a soldier, might be knighted without discredit, but scarcely an ordinary civilian. It would throw a sort of ridicule about a man or a woman of fashion, to be termed “Sir John,” or “My Lady,” without these alleviating circumstances.
The case is a little, but not much, better, as respects baronets. I should think it would no longer be easy to get a man of family, who is familiar with the world, to accept of a baronetcy, except as a professional reward. As we say in America, “the business is overdone.” Even Irish peerages are not in favour.
You will readily understand the approaching necessity for change in the institutions of England, by looking a little more closely at facts. The danger comes equally from the rich and the poor. From the rich, because they are excluded from power by the action of the borough system, and from the poor, because they are reduced to the minimum of physical enjoyments, and are formidable by numbers, as well as by their intelligence.
As regards the rich, though the scale of pretension has gradually been extending itself with the wealth of the nation, the latter has outgrown the possibility of meeting its wants. The price of a seat in parliament amounts almost to a tariff, it is true, the average expense for a term of years being set down as a thousand pounds a-year, but the supply is limited, and is in a few hands. Men may submit to a competition, but, though in the case of representation there must be some fixed numbers, they naturally dislike monopoly, and still more, in such cases, the fruits of monopoly. Were the English government strictly a money-power government, its security would be treble what it is to-day, for it would at once neutralize one of the most formidable of its enemies. But it is not; for though based on money, it is so modified as not to give even money fair play. Were there not natural political antipathies between the rich and the poor, they would unite, and speedily produce a change. It would be a master-stroke of policy to bring in all the wealth of the country again, as a loyal ally of the government, by destroying the borough system entirely, equalising representation by numbers, establishing a reasonably high rate of qualification, and, by preserving the open vote, leave money to its influence. I take it, a money-government, that is fairly in action, in an industrious and intelligent nation, is only equalled in strength by one based on popular rights, in a community accustomed to the exercise of political privileges. It is, however, the government most likely to corrupt and debase society.
When I tell you of the intelligence of the poor in England, you are to understand me, not as saying that it extends very far; but the cultivation of intellect dependent on the exercise of the mechanical arts, the cheapness of printing, and the general spirit of the age, have raised up a set of men in England, among what are called the operatives, who are keen in investigation, frequently eloquent and powerful in argument, and alive, by position, to those natural rights of which they are now deprived. These men act strongly on the minds of their fellows, and are producing an effect it would be folly to despise. Paine was of the class.
The popular accounts of the fortunes of the landed aristocracy of England, may lead you into erroneous notions concerning their relative wealth and power, so far as the two are connected. Conversing lately with one of the best informed men in the kingdom on such a subject, I alluded to the reputed income of Lord Grosvenor, who is said to have £300,000 a-year. My acquaintance laughed at the exaggeration, telling me that he did not believe there was a man in the country who had half that income, and that he knew but five or six who, he thought, could have as much as £100,000.
These large incomes are also liable to many reductions, even when they do exist. The estate is there, certainly, and the incumbent has a life interest in it; but what between widows’ dowers, younger children, mortgages, and liens created by the anticipations incident to entails, and other charges, one, who is a good judge, tells me he questions if the proprietors of England touch much more than half the amount of their rent-rolls, if indeed they receive as much. My friend is intimate with a man of rank here, with whom I have, also, a slight acquaintance, and, speaking of his estate, he added, “Now, vulgar rumour will tell you Lord —— has a hundred thousand a-year; he has, in truth, a rent-roll of sixty thousand, of which he actually receives about forty.”
There is so much beauty in probity, and one feels such a respect for those who manifest more devotedness to the affections than to worldly interests, that I cannot refrain from relating a circumstance, or two, connected with the history of this nobleman, that were related by his friend in the same conversation.
Lord —— was born a younger son. The improvidence of his father left a debt of the enormous amount of near a million of dollars. The elder brother and heir refused to recognize this claim, which did not form a lien on the estate. A moderate provision had been made for the younger brother. At this period, my friend was commissioned to speak to the latter, concerning a marriage with the heiress of a large estate; not less, I believe, than sixteen thousand a-year. He heard the proposition, coloured, hesitated, and answered that if he ever married, his choice was made. Shortly after he married his present wife, who was virtually without fortune. A few years later the elder brother died childless, when he succeeded to the titles and the estates. From that moment his expenditure was so regulated, that in a few years he was enabled to pay every sixpence of the debts of the father, since which time he has lived with the liberal hospitality becoming his station.
I do not know that the English nobility are at all deficient in liberality, but the charity-fanfaronades of Christmas blankets and hogsheads of beer, and warm cloaks, that so often appear in the journals here, have only excited a smile, while I have never seen Lord ——, since I learned these traits, without feeling a reverence for the man. He has his reward, for his wife is just such a woman as would remove all cause of regret for having acted nobly.
An English gentleman has just published a book on the subject of the exaggerations that prevail concerning the incomes of the gentry of the country. He has adopted a very simple and a very accurate mode to prove his case, which, it strikes me, he has done completely. “Vulgar” rumour gives Lord A—— thirty thousand a-year, he says, at starting. “Now we all know that the estates of Lord A—— consist of such and such manors, in such a county, and of so many more manors, all of which he names, in some other county.” These manors he shows to contain so many acres of land. The rental in each county is pretty well known, and, taking it at two pounds the acre, he calculates that nine thousand acres give but eighteen thousand a-year, gross income. This diminishes the popular rental nearly one-half. In this manner he goes on to show, in a great many real cases, (mine being suppositious), how enormously fame has exaggerated the truth in these matters. In estimating the struggle between the wealth that is in possession of power, and that which is excluded by the present political system of England, you are, therefore, to discard from your mind fully one-half of what is popularly said about the former, as sheer exaggeration.
Still the aristocracy of this country is very powerful. It has enlisted in its favour a strong national feeling, a portion of which is well founded, a part of which is fraudulent, and even wicked, and some of which is dependent on one of the most abject conditions of the mind to which man is liable. By aristocracy I do not now mean merely the peers and their heirs, but that class which is identified by blood, intermarriages, possessions, and authority in the government, for you are never to forget, though the House of Commons does contain a few members who are exceptions, that the controlling majority of that body is, to all intents and purposes, no more than another section of the interests represented by the peers. The two bodies may occasionally disagree, but it is as partners discuss their common concerns, and as the lords frequently disagree among themselves.
The English gentlemen have the merits of courage, manliness, intelligence, and manners.—Their morals are overrated, except as to the vices which are connected with meanness. Perhaps there is less of the latter than is commonly found in countries where the upper classes are more directly under the influence of courts, but even of this there is much, very much, more than it is common to believe in America. As between the English and ourselves, I honestly think we have the advantage of them on this point. They are our superiors in manners and in intelligence; they are our superiors in all that manliness which is dependent on opinion, but certainly I have known things practised, and that pretty openly, in connexion with interest, by men of condition here, which could not well be done by a gentleman with us, without losing caste. In the northern states we have very few families whose sons would now hesitate about embarking in commerce, at need, and this, of itself, is a great outlet (as well as inlet) for the vices of a pecuniary nature. The prejudices connected with this one subject are the cause of half the meannesses of Europe. The man who would hesitate about suffering his name to appear in a commercial firm would pass his life in a commission of meannesses, not to say crimes, that should put him to the ban of society. This feeling is daily becoming weaker in England, but it is still strong. Men of family scarcely ever engage openly in commerce, though they often do things covertly, which, besides possessing the taint of trade, have not the redeeming merit of even its equivocal ethics. To them the army, navy, church and government patronage are almost the only resources. The latter facts have given rise to two of the most odious of the practical abuses of the present system. A few occasionally appear at the bar, but more as criminals than as advocates. The profession is admitted within the pale of society, as it opens the way to the peerage and to parliament, but it requires too much labour and talents to be in favour. A physician in England ranks higher, professionally, than almost any where else, but he is scarcely considered an equal in the higher set. The younger sons of peers enter all the professions but that of medicine, but I never heard of one who chose to be a doctor. A curate may become Archbishop of Canterbury, but a physician can merely hope to reach a baronetcy, a dignity little coveted. Like our “Honourables,” and “Colonels,” it is not in vogue with the higher classes. I cannot better illustrate the state of feeling here, in relation to these minor titles, than by our own in relation to the appellations named, which are of much account in certain sets, but which it is thought bad taste to bandy among gentlemen.
The masculine properties of the English aristocracy (I include the gentry, you will remember) have deservedly given them favour with the nation. They owe something of this to the climate, which is favourable to field sports, and something, I think, to the nature of their empire which has fostered enterprise. Physically they are neither larger, nor stronger, nor more active than ourselves, but I think they attend more to manly exercises. The army has been exclusively their property, for it is necessary, in such a government, to keep it in the hands of those who rule. The purchase of commissions is strictly in unison with the spirit of the system. Then the insulated situation of the kingdom, coupled with its wealth, induce travelling. The influence of the latter can scarcely be overrated, and no nation has so many motives for quitting home. The English go abroad for the sake of economy, for while their actual expenses are less, their incomes are increased from five to twenty per cent., by the usual courses of exchange. Formerly none but men of rank went abroad, and they were distinguished from the rest of the nation by their taste and liberality, but now all the genteel classes (and some below them even) travel. It is true the English character on the Continent has suffered by the change, but the English nation is greatly the gainer.
The English gentlemen are not sparing of their persons in war, or in civil troubles. They would not have abandoned Paris to a mob, in 1792.[20] These are qualities to captivate the mass, who greatly prize daring and physical excellencies. Although there is a considerable and certainly an increasing hostility to the exclusive classes of England, there is also a deep feeling of respect and even of attachment for them, in a portion of the nation. Perhaps no aristocracy was ever less enervated or thrown off its guard, by the enjoyment of its advantages, than this, a fact that must be attributed, too, to the circumstance that the public, by possessing so many more franchises than usual, have kept them constantly on the alert. In the event of any struggle between the aristocrats and the mass, I should say that much may be expected from the manliness and spirit of the former, enough, perhaps, aided as these qualities would be by their habits of control and combination, to secure the victory, were it not that the very affluence of intelligence in this portion of the nation, would always put at the command of the people sufficient men of minds and authority to direct them. Although a wide reform, wide enough to admit themselves, would be apt to be sustained by the novi homines, revolution would not; for the new rich, as a body, are always found on the side opposed to popular rights; and the aristocracy would have most to apprehend from seceders from their own body, as leaders, unless events, as probably would be the case, should raise up some man of native fitness for the station, from the ranks of the people themselves.
That part of the present influence of the aristocracy which is fraudulent and even wicked, is connected with a wide-spread system of studied misrepresentation, and with abuses connected with the church. As I shall probably have occasion to write a short letter on the subject of the latter, I will touch on the former alone, at present. While the aristocracy itself is so well mannered and less apt to betray illiberal sentiments than the classes beneath it, I cannot think it free from the imputation of having conspired to circulate the atrocious misrepresentations which have been so industriously promulgated against ourselves, for instance, during the last half century. They may despise the traitors, but they love the treason. The whole code of prejudices and false political maxims which pervade society here, is the offspring of a system of which they are the head. They have differed from the other nations of Europe, in which power is exclusive, in the circumstance of the franchises of the nation. A franchise is not power of itself, but it is an exemption from the abuses of power. As it was not possible to muzzle the press, it has become necessary to make it the instrument of circulating falsehood. No means of effecting such an end are so certain as that of creating prejudice, which instantly becomes an active and efficient agent in attaining the end. The United States, her system, national character, historical facts, people, habits, manners, and morals, for obvious reasons, have been one principal object for these assaults, but as I may have occasion to speak of the Anglo-American question hereafter, I will now allude only to the internal action of the system.
Thirty-six years ago, you and I were school-fellows and class-mates, in the house of a clergyman of the true English school. This man was an epitome of the national prejudices, and, in some respects, of the national character. He was the son of a beneficed clergyman in England; had been regularly graduated at Oxford and admitted to orders; entertained a most profound reverence for the king and the nobility; was not backward in expressing his contempt for all classes of dissenters and all ungentlemanly sects; was particularly severe on the immoralities of the French revolution, and, though eating our bread, was not especially lenient to our own; compelled you and me to begin Virgil with the Eclogues, and Cicero with the knotty phrase that opens the oration in favour of the poet Archias, “because their writers would not have had placed them first in the books if they did not intend people to read them first;” spent his money freely, and sometimes that of other people; was particularly tenacious of the ritual, and of all the decencies of the church, detested a democrat as he did the devil; cracked his jokes daily about Mr. Jefferson and Black Sal, never failing to place his libertinism in strong relief against the approved morals of George III., of several passages in whose history, it is charity to suppose he was ignorant; prayed fervently of Sundays; decried all morals, institutions, churches, manners and laws but those of England, Mondays and Saturdays; and, as it subsequently became known, was living every day in the week, in vinculo matrimonii, with another man’s wife!
You know this sketch to be true. Now, I do not mean to tell you that all the stronger features of this case are at all national, but I think the prejudices, the pretending condemnation of the moral defects of those who did not think exactly as he did, and the blindness to his own faults, are. In this particular, that church of which our old master was a member, in doing the state good service, has done itself a grave injury. The popular mind has been so acted on, by a parade of religious influences, that millions of Englishmen attach a sense of criminality to the efforts of those who would reform the government. I think you must have observed how seldom one has found an active English reformer left in possession of a fair moral character. The course has usually been to commence by assailing the liberals with sneers, in connection with their origin, their pursuits, and their motives. These attacks have been addressed to the abject feeling which the establishment of an aristocracy has formed in the minds of the mass, and which has created a sort of impression that birth and fortune are necessary to the civic virtues. He who should make it matter of reproach against a public man in France, that he came of the people, would lose more than he would gain by his argument, and yet it is a constant weapon of the English party tactics. Failing of success, by these means, the next assault is against the character.
The English themselves are apt to attribute the latter expedient to a creditable feeling in the nation, which invites, by its moral sense, exposures of this nature. The reasoning may be true in part, or it is true up to the level of the dogmas of the decency-and-seemliness school which the system has created, but it is flagrantly false when viewed on pure Christian principles. Coupled with the grossness of language, the personalities, the vindictiveness and the obvious deformities of hostility and art, with which these attacks are usually made, nothing can be more inherently offensive to the feelings of those, of whom the “chiefest virtue” is charity. But we need no better proof that the whole is the result of a factitious state of things, in which a parade of morals is made to serve an end, than the fact, that, while every man who shows a generous mind is peculiarly obnoxious to be accused of vice, they who are notorious for their misdeeds are not only overlooked, but spoken of in terms of reverence, if they happen to belong to the dominant party. You will understand me; I am not now speaking of the common party abuse, which varies with events, but of a deliberate and systematic method of vituperation, by means of which the idea of liberalism in politics has become associated in the public mind, with irreligion, libertinism, pecuniary dishonesty, and, in short, with a general want of moral principle. As a consequence, men habitually, think of Mr. A——, or Sir George B——, or Lord C——, as persons to be condemned for their sins, though the very vices of which they are accused are openly practised by half the favourites and leaders of the other side, with impunity as regards the public. I can quote to you the instance of Washington, who was accused of being an unprincipled adventurer, at the commencement of the revolution, as a case in point; and I dare say your own scrupulous and pious father, passed for a fellow no better than he should be, with a majority of the well-intentioned English of that day.
It seems to me that there is a singular conformity between English opinion and the English institutions. The liberty of the country consists in franchises, which secures a certain amount of personal rights, and not in a broad system, which shall insure the control of numbers. As individuals, I am inclined to think the English (meaning those who are easy in their circumstances) do more as they please than any other people on earth; while the moment they begin to think and act collectively, I know no nation in which the public mind is so much influenced by factitious and arbitrary rules. Something like the very converse of this exists with us.
I have little to say about the influence which the aristocracy possess through the deference of their inferiors. Strange as it may seem, the subordinate classes take a sort of pride in them. Such a feeling can only have arisen from the depression of the less fortunate, and it is quite plain has gathered no small part of its intensity from any thing but that knowledge which leaves “no man a hero with his valet-de-chambre.” It exists to a singular degree, in despite of all the bluster about liberty, and I can safely say that I never yet knew an Englishman, I care not of what degree of talents, who did not appreciate the merits of a nobleman, to a certain extent, by his rank, unless he lived in free and constant communion with men of rank himself. I have found the nobles of England, certainly, as I have already told you, but it has often puzzled me to discover the aristocratic mien, the aristocratic ears, aristocratic fingers, aristocratic nails, and aristocratic feet that these people talk and write so much about. I have been often led to think of that jeu d’esprit of Hopkinson, where he says
in reading of these marvels. I need scarcely tell you that an English nobleman is morally much as the highest gentleman of a great and polished empire might be supposed to be, and in physical formation very like other men. His ears may, occasionally, be a little more obvious than common, but he possesses no immunity by which they can be made smaller than those of all around him.
I think this feeling of deference, however, is so interwoven with all the habits of thought and reasoning of the nation, that its prestige will long confer an advantage on the nobles of England, unless the torrent of change, by being unnaturally and unwisely dammed, gain so much head as to sweep all before it.
There is no great princely nobility in England, like that which exists on the continent of Europe, and which, royal personages in fact curtailed of their power by the events of this and of past ages, is still deemed worthy of forming royal alliances. In blood, modern alliances, and antiquity, the English nobles, as a class, rank among the lowest of Europe, their importance being owing to the peculiarity of their political connexion with one of the first, if not the very first state of Christendom. I do not know that their private wealth at all surpasses that of the great nobles of the continent, those of France excepted; although there is no inferior nobility here, as there, the younger sons sinking at once into the class of commoners. When the Howards of the fifteenth century were just emerging from obscurity, the Guzmans, the Radziuils, the Arembergs, and hundreds of other houses were sinking from the rank of princes into that of their present condition. The ancestors of Talleyrand were deprived of their possessions as sovereign counts, a century before the first Howard was ennobled. As to the ancient baronies that figure among the titles of the English, they are derived from a class of men who would have been followers, and not the equals, of the Guzmans and Perigords, five centuries since. There appear to me to be two errors prevalent on this subject; that of overrating the relative importance and antiquity of the nobility of England, (except when viewed as a political aristocracy, or since the revolution of 1688) and that of underrating the true condition of the English gentry. All this is not of much importance, though I was lately told of a German princess who spoke of a marriage with the House of Hanover, as a mésalliance!
END OF VOL. I.