CHAP. XVII.

PLUTOCRACY IN ENGLISH LIFE.

"Every free constitution goes like ourselves through life towards death; whatever moderates its consuming rapidity, whatever produces obstacles which require time to overcome, prolongs its existence. But a state has this advantage over an individual, that by constantly raising in an ever-increasing circle more persons to its highest freedom, it can carry back its life, and more than once, to youth, and live through it again with fresh energy."-NIEBUHR.

"Length of days be in her right hand, and in her left riches and honour: may her ways be the ways of pleasantness and all her paths be peace."

COMPROMISE is the principle of the British constitution, and it is so because fusion is the characteristic of British life. Everywhere else each social order is comparatively clear and easy to be distinguished and defined. In England all classes, orders, ranks, and distinctions run into and blend with each other in a manner which excites the admiration of those who contemplate, and the despair of those who would describe it. For the one know that this complexity, this universal interlacing, and the consequent anomalies, are the surest guarantee against absolutism of every description, and the others feel their hearts sink within them when they would pourtray every thread in such a tangled web.*

* This fusion and balance of all the social elements is a mark of the national acme, and I have endeavoured to indicate it by crossing the lines which, in the scheme in page 96, indicate the social forces. In England, where the acme is more fully developed than in any other country, this characteristic is the more conspicuous.

But a distinction should here be made between complexity of social life and complexity of government. When the former exists the latter generally follows, but often a very complicated governmental machine-as in Sparta, in Venice, in France under the restored Bourbons, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and the United States of America-is devised to provide, ineffectually enough, those checks against absolutism, whether democratic, despotic, or of whatever other kind, which the simplicity of the social life fails to give. In England all the constitutional potentates are representatives of real interests in the country, and the complications of our constitution arise from and reflect the complications of our social order.

Plutocracy has not been in England a distinct and hereditary order; it has not grown up among us by any of the simple methods enumerated in the last Chapter, it has neither entirely grown out of enriched citizens, as in Athens, nor entirely by means of trading nobility, as in some towns of Italy; but so far as there is a plutocracy in England it has resulted from a union of the two-the younger branches of the noble houses meeting on equal terms with the more successful citizens, and forming no hereditary order of plutocrats, but supplying new families to the old aristocracy of the country.

Let us suppose that in England the aristocracy had for these four or five centuries gone on, like the old aristocracies of the continent, producing children, every one of whom was noble and above all professional or gainful occupa tions except those of war and haply of the church. Let us suppose the consequent division or encumbrance of the estates of the aristocracy, the proportional diminution of individual means with the increase of the titled individuals, the consequent dependence of the greater portion of the class upon public functions, and the consequent subserviency to the Crown and the Minister. Let us suppose that the old merchants of England, the Childs, the

Greshams, and even to come down to our age, the Thellusons, the Beckfords*, the Jones Loyds, the Heathcotes, the Peels, the Strutts, had in their turn transmitted to their descendants immense and increasing wealth, and an hereditary antipathy to the old aristocracy. Let us imagine the natural consequences that in every struggle between the aristocratic and democratic elements these wealthy families would have sided against their hereditary foes, and produced the unequal contest of an over-numerous and impoverished aristocracy matched against wealthy and educated families well fitted for government, a turbulent democracy, and possibly an ambitious sovereign. Let us put this case, imaginary only when placed upon English ground, but a true representation of the stern reality in France, in Rome, in Athens, in Florence, and in some measure in Spain and Germany, and then ask why this disastrous contest and its necessary catastrophe has not been witnessed in England, and the natural solution will be furnished by the peculiar construction of the English aristocracy. The principle of primogeniture has saved us from a caste of aristocrats, and by thus modifying the peculiar frame of our social existence has modified the constitution which is the effect and the manifestation of our social existence.

The simple history of the aristocracies on the continent of Europe has been that of a caste, at first powerful by their domains, which their swords had won, holding themselves aloof from trade, and despising it as the occupation of Jews and runaway serfs. As these haughty families increased their estates became less able to support them. Two alternatives were then open: the first was to resort to public functions, not for the dignity or glory of holding them, but for the salary, whence arise a multi

*The family of the slopseller Beckford, after producing the illustrious author of "Vathek," who showed the gorgeous tastes of a plutocrat at Fonthill, was ultimately absorbed into the noble race of Hamilton.

tude of sinecures, in countries where the caste of aristocracy has thus overgrown, as in France in the eighteenth century, and the gradual exchange of the useful independence of the nobility for the subserviency of courtiers. Then nothing remains but their titles, their privileges, and their hauteur, which easily degenerates into insolence, for when the spirit of an independent aristocracy has fled, every good that belongs to that institution departs likewise. In the other alternative, the whole impoverished nobility, unable longer to live in the enjoyment of their feudal and territorial privileges, or to maintain their due state and position upon their estates, rush headlong into commerce, using the small relics of their hereditary fortune as capital with which to begin trade. This was the course pursued in mediæval Italy and in Holland.

The English aristocracy has steered between the two courses. The elder sons, succeeding to the quasi-feudal rights and privileges of their feudal ancestors, keep aloof from all professions and occupations, except those of the soldier, the sailor, or the statesman. The younger sons embark in professions, or the higher kinds of trade, and bring with them, from their ancestral homes, a higher feeling and a loftier tone than would be found among the classes in which they mingle, if those classes were all composed of the sons of small traders; and when they have made their fortunes in the professions, they found families themselves, and take their place, if not alongside of their elder brothers, yet among the landed gentry of

the nation.

Many a great exploit, many a life of enduring energy has been inspired and sustained by the determination of some impoverished being to redeem the fallen fortunes of his family. The readers of Macaulay will remember his description of Warren Hastings. His paternal estate at Daylesford had been sold to strangers. He determined to recover it. "When under a tropical sun he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance,

and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford.

And when his long public life, so singularly chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die."

In 1669, when the French aristocracy was becoming too numerous to maintain its ancient independence, and when public functions were being multiplied merely to stow away the younger branches of the nobles, a wise edict was published by Louis XIV. proclaiming maritime commerce not derogatory to the noblesse.+ This salutary provision, which it would seem was rendered inoperative in France by the vanity of the noblesse, gave them the opportunity of entering into commerce by the same road which had been traversed originally with so much of glory by the noblesse of the Italian republics, and afterwards by the English nobility and landowners. For the time is hardly to be discovered when adventures of mingled sea-fight and commerce were scorned by the higher classes in England. The Danes and Saxons, who furnished the layer of gentlemen next below the Norman nobility, originally gained their fortunes by maritime ad

The French aristocracy weathered the storm longer than those of Germany and many parts of Italy, by reason of its similarity in one respect to the English. The estates of the barons were not divided among their children as in Germany and parts of Italy, but descended to the eldest son. (Machiavelli On the Constitution and Affairs of France.) The younger had therefore to seek their living in the king's service. This in time led to the vast number of sinecures which burdened the state. So that in the end the French nobility fell because the younger sons would not betake themselves to commerce, or marry the daughters of rich citizens-while the elder neglected their estates, squandered their rents in Paris, and sold portions of their property to peasant proprietors.

It authorised "tous gentils-hommes à prendre part dans les vaisseaux marchands, denrées et marchandises d'iceux, sans être censés déroger à noblesse, pourvu qu'ils ne vendent point en détail." Montesquieu (liv. xx. c. 21, 22), objected to the trading of the nobility as liable to weaken the strength of the monarchy. Henault (Abrégé Chronol. de l'Histoire de France, an 1669,) says that Montesquieu had changed his mind upon this point before he died.

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