Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

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.