It is not easy to say whence a hereditary aristocracy in France is to be derived, if we must really have one. A nucleus of old families or of military men would be wanting, around which the new elements might group themselves. Now, the old French nobility allowed itself to be degraded to the state of menials under Louis XIV., and sunk into the grossest debauchery under Louis XV.; the trials of exile did nothing for those who escaped the revolutionary axe; when they re-appeared amongst us, they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing. The infusion of the military aristocracy of the empire has not regenerated it. Is the retirement to which the old nobility has condemned itself since the revolution of 1830, a retreat, in which by meditation and repentance it is to renew its youth, or is it not rather a tomb, in which it has buried itself forever? Will the old soil be heaved by earthquakes into new inequalities of surface? Have we among our peasants some unknown scions of the slayers of Cæsar, or of the children of Brennus, who will be revealed to the world by some mighty convulsions? Or will some Tartar horde from the North, the great hive of nations, put an end to our domestic quarrels, fix themselves in our palaces, seize our most fertile fields, wed our noblest, richest, and loveliest heiresses, and, sword in hand, proclaim to us; "The reign of lawyers is over, ours is begun."
If the United States have also to constitute an aristocracy, and give political existence to the sentiment of family, their future would be yet more cloudy and uncertain than our own. The hereditary element of aristocracy has always come from conquest, or, at least, has supported itself, by alliance or compromise, by the sword of the conqueror. How can there be a conquest in the United States? It is possible that they may conquer Mexico, but they cannot be conquered by it. It cannot be supposed that some red Alexander or Charlemagne from the distant steppes of the West, heading the fierce tribes of the Pawnee braves, and dragging in his victorious train swarms of revolted negroes, can ever become the founder of a military dynasty and aristocracy. If the Union should ever be dissolved, and the hardy sons of the West, pouring down from the Alleghanies, should ever conquer the people of the North, enervated by luxury and enfeebled by anarchy, and those of the South, weakened by servile wars, still no germ of a hereditary aristocracy would exist in such a conquest; for the victors and vanquished would all be of the same family.
The Southern States, however, are already organised on the principle of hereditary aristocracy. It is true that the privileged class is so numerous, that, unless a privilege is established within a privilege, they do not form an aristocracy properly so called; but the fear of a rising of the blacks keeps the whites closely united and forces them to submit to a vigourous organisation of authority at every sacrifice. The relative situation of the whites and blacks admits of no hesitation.
It is evident that the establishment of a hierarchy possessing any stability, would be the most difficult in the States without slaves, and that the elevation of the sentiment of family to political dominion, would there encounter the most vigourous resistance. In the maritime States north of the Potomac, the difficulty would seem to be insurmountable. These States contain large towns, with an extensive commerce carried on by great houses, great factories in the English style, powerful trading, financial, and manufacturing companies, that is to say, the germs of an extreme inequality; yet their laws consecrate a system of absolute equality, and the sovereign democracy shows itself resolved to maintain it at all costs. Between these two counteracting forces, a struggle is going on, and cases might be imagined in which the contest may assume a terrible character. If any cause were to interrupt the prosperity of these States; if, by means of a separation, which, however, is daily becoming less and less probable, the markets of the South were to be shut against their merchants and manufacturers; if the sons of the farmers and their hired workmen could no longer have access to the lands and growing cities of the West; if, to crown their misery, a foreign war should blockade their harbours, they would be exposed to the most frightful convulsions. The Northern States, then, must remain indissolubly wedded to the Union of the States, and firmly devoted to the policy of peace with the European monarchies.
If, then, it were proved that there was an irresistible necessity for a distinction of ranks in every society, and that the principle of inheritance or sentiment of family must be one of the constituent principles of a privileged class, which is requisite to form the apex of the social pyramid, it must be acknowledged that the prospect of the North is more dark and alarming than that of the South. By the exercise of unyielding vigilance over the slaves, the South may continue to maintain the outward forms of a regular social system. It would, indeed, be a retrograde system, for it would be morally a copy of the ancient order of society, which had its day before the advent of the Christ, patched up with the improved material order of modern times; it would be despotism, but an orderly, organised despotism, which after all would be a less terrible scourge than the anarchy which threatens the North.
Nevertheless, whatever may be the destiny of aristocracy and the political fate of the family sentiment, I am loath to believe, that all that energy and intelligence which I have witnessed in the Northern States of the Anglo-American Union, can be swallowed up and lost. No deductions of logic can force me to conclude, that a society, superiour to any that has yet flourished in our ancient continent, will not, one day, and that soon, exist in the fine regions on the east and the west of the Alleghanies, around the wide basin of the great lakes, and along the far-stretching banks of these mighty rivers. It cannot be that a superiour race has transported its children to these shores to devour each other. If, on the one side, American civilisation seems to be exposed to formidable dangers, it presents itself in other points of view, with strongly marked features of permanency and stability. If great perils encompass its cradle, is it not the cradle of an infant Hercules?
FOOTNOTES:
[DU] It has already been mentioned that Massachusetts has lately adopted the new policy in regard to public works. [And it might be added in respect to the school-system.—Transl.]
[DV] In 1834, the Ohio legislature incorporated a Life and Trust Company, with very great powers; the company was organised in 1835, and in 1836, a proposition was made in the legislature the effect of which would have been indirectly to abolish it. Happily the legislature saw the necessity of keeping up the credit of the State by a faithful adherence to its engagements, and the proposition was rejected. Mr Dallas, of Philadelphia, who has been a Senator of the United States, has quite recently urged the adoption of ex post facto measures, with the object of annulling the charter of the United States Bank.
[DW] The English aristocracy is accessible to every man of superior qualities. The king can and often does make a peer of a commoner, and the order of knights, which is the lowest degree of nobility, is essentially an aristocracy of talents and personal services, not being hereditary. But if the aristocracy of intellect has thus got a footing in the aristocracy of birth, the latter has also encroached upon the former; for with the constitution of the Anglican church, and in the absence of monasteries and the numerous gratuitous institutions of the olden time, it is more difficult for a swine-herd, like Sixtus V., to rise in the establishment at the present day, than it would have been for him to reach the summit of the Catholic hierarchy in the Middle Ages.