LITMIR.BIZ

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volcanic outbursts of popular force. Under such outbursts, no successful usurper, no "Hero-king," no sovereign by the will of the people, has been able to devise a principle which shall establish his throne in security, and serve in the stead of that prestige of old hereditary succession, that grand feudal idea of kingly right, which is the essential fountain of the reverence that guards royalty. Louis Philippe would have confirmed his sovereignty by means of the influence exerted upon interested officials. No sooner was his power shaken in its unstable equilibrium than the men whom his gold had bought rushed to worship the rising sun of the young Republic. Napoleon, before him, would have built up a similar power on military glory: his doom was sealed when his eagles turned from the field of Leipsic. Cromwell employed religious fanaticism to the same end: the fanaticism lasted his time; but we will venture to say that, had he lived, his protectorate would not have reached the seventeen years allotted to the democratic King of the French.

      Our author is of opinion that, after all, the system of compulsory partition will fail to guard what has since become the French Republic: —

      "But, though it were possible, which it is not, to obviate the mischievous influence of the French and other plans for preventing the increase and continuance of property in the same families, it may be confidently predicted that they will, in time to come as hitherto, wholly fail in their grand object of perpetuating the ascendancy of the democracy. In old settled and fully peopled countries, where the bulk of the population is necessarily poor and dependent, an aristocracy is indispensable for the support of a free system of government – 'Il importe à tous les peuples qui ont la prétention de devenir ou de rester puissants, d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-à-dire un corps héréditaire ou non, qui conserve et perpetue les traditions, donne de l'esprit de suite à la politique, et se voue à l'art le plus difficile de tous, qu' aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de gouverner. Un peuple sans aristocratic pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts, mais sa gloire politique me semble devoir être passagère comme un méteore.' Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amerique, ii. 379," pp. 171, 172.

      We have already said that we think England certain to have an aristocracy of some description. The ambition of the people to advance themselves individually in the social scale will necessarily lead to a high value being set upon those advanced positions, and will tend to make them the fulcrum from which the country is governed. And we can conceive nothing more fatal to our national organisation than the result which would follow indirectly from the repeal of these laws. It may be supposed at first sight that no very vital question is involved here. Let those who suppose so, take a view of the probable condition of society which would ensue. These, and other so-called feudalities, being swept away, land becomes a commercial article, according to the desire of the plutocratic reformers. Estates are trucked about in the market like bills of exchange; constantly changing hands, their owners have little connexion with them or the people that live on them, regarding them merely in the light of so much realised capital. The old families gradually become dispossessed; mere wealth is recognised as the sole qualification for rank and influence; and the leading class in the state is composed of men who are an aristocracy by virtue of ready money. Far be it from us to undervalue the enterprise, integrity, and industry of our merchant manufacturers and tradesmen. But we will say that when we meet with a man, as we often do among those classes, endowed with a broad range of thought and high and noble aims, we regard him as possessing these qualities not as a consequence, but in spite of a commercial training. The immediate effects of such training are to narrow the mind and cramp the soul, not in respect of domestic and social life – for in these, perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed by any other – but in the provinces of the statesman and the politician.

      In these times, it seems to be commonly supposed that a legislator – like a poet —nascitur, non fit. There is a certain kind of training, the acquisition of a certain cast of thought, which are requisites for statesmen as a class, as much as his legal reading for a lawyer, or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman. Statesmen, however, have to deal with practical matters; and therefore we think, as we have before said, that while the predominance of these requisites in the legislature is essential to good government, there may with advantage at the same time be a certain admixture of the men practically versed in commerce and manufactures. But this should be always a subordinate, not a leading, element in the principles which regulate the administration of government. – We repeat, that the counting-house, the loom, and the anvil, are not the best schools for legislators. For that office, a man requires leisure and education. We shall be told that a "Squire" is not necessarily an educated man. We do not maintain that he is. But, in the first place, as we cannot well have an education-test, we must go to the class in which, as a class, we find the highest and most enlarged form of education; and we believe that this qualification can, without question, be claimed for the leisure-class, or gentlemen of England. In the second place, it should be remembered, that if the squire is not always individually what we should call an educated man, he yet imbibes his thoughts and notions from those who are such, who give tone to the society in which he moves. In investigating the characteristics of classes, it can scarcely be but that a number of exceptions to our general rules will force themselves upon our attention. Yet, in good truth, we believe that almost all the individual examples which can be cited will bear out our estimate. The highest contributions to the legislature, on the part of the middle or commercial classes, have been the shrewd practical men of business, men of the stamp of Mr Hawes. As for the Cobdens and Brights, et hoc genus omne, their only motive principle appears to be the interests of My Shop. Their notion of loyalty, patriotism, and British prosperity, is nothing but low wages, high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.

      Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (Off. i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est agriculturâ meliùs, nihil uberiùs, nihil dulciùs, nihil homine libero digniùs." In this country we should find it difficult to go along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points. But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared with mammon-worship.

      While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws. The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with the transmission of land according to "commercial principles," that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance if only as clashing with mammonism.

      While the brawlers about "improvement" and "progress," are heaping their meaningless abuse upon feudalities, we should be glad to know what

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