The gentry of small fortune have also disappeared. The colonial war bore hard upon them, but the last has crushed them. Inheriting what to their forefathers had been an ample subsistence, they have found themselves step by step curtailed of the luxuries and at last of the comforts of life, without a possibility of helping themselves. For those who were arrived at manhood it was too late to enter into any profession; and to embark what they possessed in trade was hazarding all, and putting themselves at the mercy of a partner. Meantime year after year the price of every article of necessary consumption has increased with accelerating rapidity: education has become more costly, and at the same time more indispensable; and taxation year after year falls heavier, while the means of payment become less. In vain does he whose father has lived in opulence, and whom the villagers with hereditary respect still address hat in hand, or bow to as they pass,—in vain does he put down the carriage, dismiss the footman, and block up windows even in the house front. There is no escape. Wine disappears from his side-board; there is no longer a table ready for his friend; the priest is no longer invited after service;—all will not do: his boys must out to sea, or seek their fortune in trade; his girls sink lower, and become dependants on the rich, or maintain themselves by the needle, while he mortgages the land, for immediate subsistence, deeper and deeper as the burthen of the times presses heavier and heavier;—and happy is he if it lasts long enough to keep him from absolute want before he sinks into the grave.
While one part of the community is thus depressed by the effects of war, and the commercial system, and the diminished value of money, they who are in the lucky scale rise as others sink; and merchants and bankers and contractors make their way by wealth even into the ranks of nobility. James I., whom we compelled to cut off the head of the Raleigh, being perpetually at his shifts to supply the extravagance of his infamous favourites, invented the title of baronet, and offered fifty of these titles for sale at a thousand pounds each,—in those days a weighty sum. This title has never indeed since been publicly put up to sale, yet it is still to be purchased; and as one of the expedients during the American war, it is known that the then minister, having no readier means of rewarding one of his adherents, gave him the blank patent of a baronetcy, to make the most of, and fill up with what name he pleased. It is true that the title confers no power, the holder still continuing a commoner; but when honorary distinctions are thus disposed of, they cease to be honourable. Knighthood is here bestowed indiscriminately upon the greatest and the meanest occasions: it was conferred upon Sir Sidney Smith, who stopt the progress of Bonaparte in Syria and drove him from Acre; and it is lavished upon every provincial merchant who comes up with an address from his native city to the king upon any subject of public congratulation. This title, which consists in affixing Sir to the proper name (a word equivalent in its common acceptation to Senor), differs from the baronetcy in not being hereditary; but, as I have before said, whoever chooses to pay the price may entail it upon his children.
The indiscriminate admission to nobility is a practice which produces the same mischievous effect upon public opinion. They must be short-sighted politicians who do not see that, if they would have nobility respected, they should reserve it as the reward of great and signal services; that it is monstrous to give the same honours and privileges to a man because he has the command of three or four boroughs, as to Nelson for the battle of the Nile. This however is not all the evil; the political system of the country is altered by it, and the power of the old nobles gradually transferred to a set of new men, to an aristocracy of wealth. The Lords in England form the second power in the stale, and no law can be enacted till it has received their approbation. About a century ago the party in opposition to the crown was known to be the strongest in the house of lords, and the queen, knowing that her measures would else be outvoted, created twelve new peers, who turned the scale. This open and undisguised exertion of the prerogative, to the actual subversion of the constitution as it then stood, provoked nothing more than a sarcasm. When the first of these new peers gave his vote upon the question, one of the old nobles addressed himself to the rest, and said, "I suppose, gentlemen, you all vote by your foreman," alluding to their number, which was the same as that of a common jury. This practice of granting peerages has been more frequent during the present reign than at any former period, not less than three-fifths of the house of lords having been created, and the number is every year increased. But to the old aristocracy of the country every new creation is a diminution of their power and weight in the political scale. This evil will eventually occasion its own remedy; the lords will become at last too numerous for one assembly, and sooner or later some mode of election for seats must be resorted to for the younger peers, as is now the case in Scotland.
Agur prayed to the Almighty to give him neither poverty nor riches, and the wisest of mankind recorded his prayer for its wisdom. That which is wisdom for an individual must be wisdom for a nation, for wisdom and morality are not variable. There are too much riches and too much poverty in England; and were there less of the one there would be less of the other. Taxation might be so directed as to break down the great properties, and counteract the law of primogeniture.—Without that law no country can emerge from barbarism, (unless, as in Peru, no right of individual property be acknowledged,) and, in small estates, it seems advisable that it should always hold good; but when a nation has attained to that state of improvement which England has, the operation of the law is mischievous. Society has outgrown it. But thus it is that, retaining institutions after their utility has ceased, man is crippled on his march, by fettering, like the Chinese women, the feet of maturity with the shoes of childhood.
LETTER LXI.
Despard's Conspiracy.—Conduct of the Populace on that Occasion.—War.—The Question examined whether England is in Danger of a Revolution.—Ireland.
A most extraordinary conspiracy to kill the king and to overthrow the government has been detected. A certain Colonel Despard and a few soldiers were the only persons concerned. This man had for many years been the object of suspicion, and had at different times been confined as a dangerous person. Whether his designs were always treasonable, or whether he was goaded on by a frantic desire of revenge for what he had suffered, certain it is that he corrupted some of the king's guards to fire at him in his carriage, from a cannon which always stands by the palace. If it missed, the others were to be ready to dispatch him with their swords. The scheme had spread no further than this handful of associates; and they trusted to the general confusion which it would occasion, and to the temper of the mob. These facts have been proved by the testimony of some of the parties concerned. Despard on his trial steadily denied them, and laid a not unreasonable stress upon the absurdity of the scheme. The jury who pronounced him guilty unaccountably recommended him to mercy; he, however, and some of his accomplices have suffered death. The rest, it is supposed, will be pardoned.[9] With such lenity are things conducted in England. No arrests have followed, no alarm has been excited; the people are perfectly satisfied of his guilt, and only say What a blessing that it did not happen under Pitt!—Never had a nation a more perfect confidence in the rectitude of their minister.
The execution was after the ordinary manner, with this difference only, that the criminal after he was dead was beheaded, and the head held up with this proclamation, "This is the head of a traitor." He addressed the people from the scaffold, solemnly protested that he was innocent, and that he died a martyr to the zeal with which he had ever been the friend of their liberties. If revenge were the rooted passion of his soul, never was that passion more strongly exemplified than by this calm declaration of a dying man, which was so well calculated to do mischief,—and had it been under Mr Pitt's administration, a great part of the nation would have believed him. What is most extraordinary is, that the mob applauded him while he spoke, took off their hats as if in respect when he suffered, and hissed the executioner when he held up his bloody head. They burnt one of the witnesses in effigy,—and attended the body to the grave, as if they had been giving him the honours of a public funeral.
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