It may appear an innovation, but we are persuaded that it would be only a return to the fundamental and ancient principles of the constitution, to make the possession of a real estate of a certain value, for a certain time, a legal title to claim the right to nobility. Thus the possession of an estate of £10,000 per annum clear rental, or of 5000 acres, by the same family, in direct descent for four generations, should of itself constitute a right for its owner to be ranked in the lowest order of nobility,—that of barons,—and the barony should give its name to its possessor; while, the possession of land of greater extent and value should modify the superior titles of those who held them, until the highest rank in the peerage were attained. All nobles holding not less than £100,000 per annum of clear rental, or 50,000 acres, should ipso facto and de jure become dukes, and so on in proportion between these two extremes of the peerage. Baronets should rank, in virtue of their estates, immediately after the barons; and in their turn, too, the possession of a certain income from landed property, such as £5000 a-year clear for four generations, in the same family, should immediately entitle its owner to rank among the baronets, and to have the style and privileges of that order.
It will be urged, on the other hand, that the crown would thereby be deprived of the power of rewarding meritorious public servants, by calling them up to the House of Peers, if the possession of a certain large amount of landed property were made a sine quâ non for every creation. To this it may be replied that, though the prerogatives of the crown require extension rather than contraction, yet that a sufficient power of reward would be possessed, if men of eminence in the public service, whether great commanders or distinguished lawyers, were summoned to the Upper House for their lives only, without their titles being made hereditary; and further, that other distinctions might be given which would be fully sufficient rewards in themselves without any encroachment being made on the privileges of the order of nobles. Thus, in former times, when the honour of knighthood was not so common as it has now become, a great general and a great judge considered themselves rewarded enough if knighted: they never thought of being created peers. And the fact is, that though personal nobility—the nobility acquired by the performance of great actions—is in itself of the highest value to the state, as well as to the individual, it is not sufficiently valuable to entitle the heirs of a great man to take perpetual rank among the great landed proprietors of the realm. The duties and responsibilities of nobility depend more upon the trust reposed in each member than upon that member's personal qualifications. The noble cannot be separated from his lands nor from his tenants, nor from the multifarious heavy responsibilities thereby incurred; he is the representative of a great interest in the state; he is the representative of his land, and of all connected with it; he is the representative of a great class and gathering: his duties are not merely personal; he cannot found his right to nobility upon personal merit alone. Personal qualifications can give no valid right to hereditary privileges, whereas land is perpetual—rura manebunt—and the privileges as well as the duties attached to it should be perpetual also.
It would, therefore, be another step towards constituting the aristocracy of the state on a more solid and reasonable basis, if the orders of baronets, and of knights of various descriptions, were purified of their anomalies, and rendered attainable only under rules of a more general and fixed nature than at present prevail. Both these classes of nobles—for so they may be called—require considerable purification; the former, that of baronet, should be made the intermediate class between the nobles by personal merit, or knights, and those who are nobles by their lands, the peers. As was observed before, no baronetcy should be conferred unless a real estate of a certain value could be shown to be possessed, clear of all mortgage and debt; and the retention of such an estate for a certain number of generations should establish a legal claim to the title of baronet; while the subsequent increase of the same estate, and a similar retention of it for a certain number of descents, should establish a further claim to the honour of the peerage. If the orders of knighthood were made more difficult of entry, and if they were specially reserved only for public personal services, they would rise again in public estimation, and would be suitable for all purposes of reward required by the sovereign.
At the same time, and as a consequence of this, peers and baronets should not be admitted into the orders of knighthood—they should be satisfied with their own dignities. The garter, the thistle, and the shamrock should be reserved especially for the great military and naval commanders of the realm: the bath, and perhaps one or two other new orders, should be destined for men of eminence in whatever line of life they might be able to render service to their country.
It is an opinion controverted by some, but it seems founded in reason, that the twelve judges, who are at the head of their most honourable profession, should not merely be allowed to sit on the benches of the House of Lords, but that they should have the right of voting therein, and, in fact, be summoned as peers for life upon their elevation to the bench. No order of men in the whole state would exercise power more conscientiously, and from no other source could the Upper House derive at once such an immense increase of deliberative strength in the revision and framing of the laws. The bench of spiritual lords, and the bench of legal lords, ought to form two of the purest ornaments in the bright galaxy of the peers of the realm.
We shall content ourselves for the present with indicating two other points, recognised and admitted by the constitutional forms of the government, but at present much lost sight of; and they may be considered as affecting the lowest order—the very root of the whole nobility of the land.
Members of the Lower House for counties are always called knights of the shires they represent; and so they ought to be. No person should be eligible to represent a county unless previously adorned with the honour either of knighthood or of the baronetage, or unless the younger son of a peer of the realm; and indeed the attaching of titles of nobility to the possession of estates of a certain value and fixity of tenure, and the annexing of baronetcies to similar properties, would put all the principal country gentlemen in a position suited to the duties of a knight of the shire. We should not then see the absurd and mischievous anomaly of an ambitious theorist of no landed property in his own possession, but backed by the democrats of a manufacturing district, thrust upon the legislature as the representative of a large agricultural county. We should rather find the knights of the shires forming a compact and most influential body in the imperial parliament, the real representatives of the interests of their constituents, and the main conservative element in the Lower House of the legislature.
The bearing of arms, and the gratuitous assumption of the title of esquire, now so universally adopted, require to be more strictly limited, unless it is desired that the whole system should fall from inevitable ridicule into ultimate disuse. It is a kind of morbid feeling that has thus been produced by national vanity, and will some day or other work out its opposite extreme, unless restrained in due time. For the undue granting of arms the Herald's College is greatly responsible; but for the universal assumption of the correlative title, society at large is to be blamed. It is one of the weaknesses of the day, that men and things are no longer called by their true names, and it indicates a downward progress in the national fortunes rather than the contrary. The evil might be checked by the confining of the right to wear coats of arms or shields to the orders of knighthood only—as it used to be at the first institution of the custom; while for all persons under that standing in society, some distinctive badge or family token might be adopted, sufficient to identify their lineage, yet showing a difference of grade. It is more difficult to say how the appellations of the various classes of commoners shall be settled; but there can be no doubt that the common herding of all men together—whether under the names of esquires, gentlemen, or even of "gents"—is an absurdity: mischievous, inasmuch as it tends to level what ought to be unequal, and as it renders ridiculous what ought to be respected.
We readily allow that the ideas propounded above are more or less Utopian; so, however, are all ideas of change. With this excuse, however, we content ourselves for the present. If we have advocated any amendments, they are not in the direction of what is called, falsely enough—Progress, but in that of what is really and truly improvement, because it implies a reverting to the fundamental and unalterable basis of the modern European social system. "Progress" now means advancement in the cause of democracy—that is, in the path which marks the decline and fall, and ultimate destruction of any old nation. Far be it from us to lend a hand to aught that can assist this fatal and destructive process. We would preserve, and restore, and improve, rather than destroy. And it is because we believe this ancient spirit of feudalism to be that which contains the great elements of national prosperity, that we therefore advocate a return towards some of its first principles. A further development of this we reserve for a future occasion. But this we will maintain, that in the great cycle of years which constitute the life of a people, the upward rising of the nation is characterised by the active vitality of what we will call feudalism, its downward sinking by the existence of democratic license and opulent enervation, following upon the decline of warlike and chivalrous pursuits. The process of corruption and of disintegration may be slow, but it is not the less certain. It overtakes even the most prosperous nations at last. Would that we could check and avert that evil from our own country!