It is our deliberate conviction, that, from the foundations of civil society, human annals present no second case of infamy equal to that which is presented by the condition of Spain and Portugal from the year 1807 up to our own immediate era. It is a case the more interesting, because two opposite verdicts have been pronounced upon it by men of the greatest ability amongst ourselves. Some, as the present and the late Laureate, have found in the Peninsular struggle with Napoleon, the very perfection of popular grandeur; others, agreeing with ourselves, have seen in this pretended struggle nothing but the last extravagance of thrasonic and impotent national arrogance. Language more frantically inflated, and deeds more farcically abject, surely were never before united. It seems therefore strange, that a difference, even thus far, should exist between Englishmen standing upon the same facts, starting from the sane principles. But perhaps, as regards Mr Wordsworth, he did not allow enough for the long series of noxious influences under which Spain had suffered. And this, at any rate, is notorious—he spoke of the Spanish people, the original stock (unmodified by courtly usages, or foreign sentiments, or city habits) of the Spanish peasantry and petty rural proprietors. This class, as distinguished from the aristocracy, was the class he relied on; and he agreed with us in looking upon the Spanish aristocracy as traitors—that is, as recreants and apostates—from any and every cause meriting the name of national. If he found a moral grandeur in Spain, it was amongst that poor forsaken peasantry, incapable of political combination, who could not make a national party in the absence of their natural leaders. Now, if we adopt the mild temperament of some Spanish writers, calling this "a schism in the natural interests," how shocking that such a schism could have arisen at so dreadful a crisis! That schism, which, as a fact, is urged, in the way of excuse, merely as a possibility, is already itself the opprobrium for Spain never to be washed out. For in Spain, what was the aristocracy? Let us not deceive ourselves, by limiting this term to the feudal nobility or grandees; the aristocracy comprehended every man that would naturally have become a commissioned officer in the army. Here, therefore, read the legend and superscription of the national dishonour. The Spanish people found themselves without a gentry for leading their armies. England possessed, and possesses a gentry, the noblest that the world has seen, who are the natural leaders of her intrepid commonalty, alike in her fleets and in her armies. But why? How and in what sense qualified? Not only by principle and by honour—that glorious distinction which poor men can appreciate, even when less sternly summoned to its duties; not only by courage as fiery and as passively enduring as the courage of the lower ranks, but by a physical robustness superior to that of any other class taken separately; and, above all, by a scale of accomplishments in education, which strengthen the claim to command, even amongst that part of the soldiery least capable of appreciating such advantages. In France again, where no proper aristocracy now exits, there is, however, a gentry, qualified for leading; the soldiers have an entire reliance on the courage of their officers. But in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, at the period of Napoleon, the soldiers knew to a certainty that their officers could not be depended on; and for a reason absolutely without remedy, viz. that in Spain, at least, society is not so organized by means of the press locally diffused, and by social intercourse, as that an officer's reputation could be instantaneously propagated (as with us) whithersoever he went. There was then no atmosphere of public opinion, for sustaining public judgments and public morals. The result was unparalleled; here for the first time was seen a nation, fourteen millions strong, so absolutely palsied as to lie down and suffer itself to be walked over by a body of foreigners, entering in the avowed character of robbers. Colonel Napier, it is true, has contradicted himself with regard to the value of the guerillas; alternately ridiculing then as an imbecile force, and yet accrediting them as neutralizers of regular armies, to an enormous amount. But can a more deplorable record be needed of Spanish ignominy, than that a nation, once the leader of Europe as to infantry and military skill, should, by mere default of an intrepid gentry, be thrown upon the necessity of a brigand force? Equally abject was the state of Portugal. Let any man read the French general Foy's account of the circumstances under which Junot's van, separated by some days' march from the rest of the army, entered Lisbon in 1807. The rural population of Portugal, in most provinces, is a fine athletic race; and foreigners take a false estimate of this race, from the depraved mob of Lisbon. This capital, however, at that time, contained 60,000 fighting men, a powerful fortress, and ships in the river. Yet did Junot make his entry with 6000 of the poorest troops, in a physical sense, that Europe could show. Foy admits, that the majority were poor starveling boys, who could scarcely hold their muskets from cold and continual wet, hurried by forced marches, ill fed, desponding, and almost ripe for the hospital. Vast crowds had assembled to see the entry. "What!" exclaimed the Portuguese, "are these little drowned rats the élite of Napoleon's armies?" Inevitably, the very basest of nations, would, on such an invitation to resistance, have risen that same night, whilst the poor, childish, advanced guard was already beaten to their hands. The French officers apprehended such an attempt, but nothing happened; the faint-hearted people threw away this golden opportunity, never to be retrieved. And why? Because they had no gentry to lead, to rally, or to counsel them. The populace in both countries, though miserably deteriorated by the long defect of an aristocracy whom they could respect, were still sound at the heart; they felt the whole sorrow of their own degradation; and that they would have fought, was soon proved in the case of the Portuguese, when we lent them officers and training; as it was proved also thirty years afterwards in the case of the Spaniards, when Don Carlos, in a time of general peace, obtained good officers from every part of Europe. Each country was forced into redeeming itself by the overflowing upon it of a foreign gentry. And yet, even at the moment of profoundest degradation, such was the maniacal vanity still prevailing amongst the Spaniards, that at one time the Supreme Junta forwarded the following proposal to the British Government:—Men they had; their own independence of foreign aid, in that sense, they had always asserted; money it was, and not armies, which they needed; and they now proposed an arrangement, by which the Spanish armies, as so notoriously the heroes of Europe, should be rendered universally disposable for the task of facing the French in the field, whilst the British (as confessedly unequal to duties so stern) should be entrusted with the garrison duty of the fortresses. "Illâ se jactet in aulâ Anglia;" and, since the help of the English navy (which really was good) would be available as to the maritime fortresses, doubtless England might have a chance for justifying the limited confidence reposed in her, when sheltered from the fiercer storms of war by the indomitable lions of Ocana. It is superfluous to say, that the gratitude of Spain, at the close of the war, was every thing that ought to have been expected from this moonstruck vanity at its opening.
Such are the results for nations, when they betray to the whole world an aristocracy bankrupt of honour, emasculated, and slothful. Spoliators so reckless as Napoleon, are not always at hand for taking advantage of this domestic ruin; but it is impossible that a nation, absolutely rich as Spain was in the midst of her relative poverty, can advertise itself for centuries as a naked, defenceless waif, having neither leaders nor principles for organizing a resistance, but that eventually she will hear of a customer for her national jewels. In reality, Spain had been protected for 150 years, by the local interposition of France; had France not occupied the antechamber to the Peninsula, making it impossible for any but a maritime power to attack Spain in strength, Madrid would have echoed to the cannon of the spoiler, at least a century before the bloody 3d of May 1808.[[6]] In the same way, Austria has furnished for centuries a screen to the Italian Peninsula. Yet, in that case, the want of unity amongst so many subdivisions that were independent states, might be pleaded as an excuse. Pitiable weakness there was in both cases; and "to be weak is to be miserable;" but degradation by degradation, universal abasement of the national energies, as an effect through wilful abasement as a cause; this miserable spectacle has been exhibited in mellow maturity by no Christian nations but those of Spain and Portugal. Both have degenerated into nations of poltrons, and from what ancestors? From those who once headed the baptized in Europe, and founded empires in the other hemisphere.
———"Into what depth thou see'st,
From what height fallen!"———
So that, if this gloomy shadow has crept over luminaries once so bright through the gradual eclipse of their aristocracies, we need no proof more pathetic or terrific of the degree in which great nations, with the whole burden of their honour and their primary interests, are dependent, in the final extremity, upon the quality of their gentry—considered as their sole natural leaders in battle.
With this previous indication of the unrivalled responsibility pressing upon aristocracies, it is our purpose to dwell a little upon those accidents of advantage arising out of constitution, and those differences of quality, experimentally made known to us in a thousand trials, which sum and express the peculiarities of the British nobility and gentry.
This first point, as to the constitution of our aristocracy, the basis on which it reposes cannot be better introduced than by a literary fact open to all the world, but never yet read in its true meaning. When it became advisable, after the violent death of Charles I., that some public exposure should be applied to the past disputes between the Throne and the Parliament, and some account given of the royal policy—the first question arose naturally upon the selection of a writer having the proper qualifications. Two of these qualifications were found in a French scholar of distinction, Monsieur de Saumaise, better known by his Latinized name of Salmasius. He was undoubtedly a scholar of prodigious attainments: and the first or unconditional qualification for such a task, of great ability and extensive information, could not be denied to him. Here was a subject fitted to fix attention upon any writer, and on the other hand, a writer brilliantly qualified to fix attention upon any subject. Unhappily, a third indispensable condition, viz.—that the writer should personally know England—was entirely overlooked. Salmasius had a fluent command of Latin; and, supported by a learned theme, he generally left a dazzling impression even upon those who hated his person, or disputed his conclusions. But, coming into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary war: the very word "rebellion," so often applied to it, involves the error of presuming that in its principles the war was unconstitutional, and in its objects was finally defeated. Whereas the subsequent Revolution of 1688-9 was but a resumption of the very same principles and indispensable purposes under more advantageous auspices—was but a re-affirmation of the principle votes from 1642 to 1645. The one capital point of a responsibility, virtual though not formal, lodged in the crown, and secured through a responsible ministry—this great principle, which Charles I. once conceded in the case of Lord Strafford, but ever afterwards to his dying day repented and abjured, was at length for ever established, and almost by acclamation. In a case so novel, however, to Englishmen, and as yet so unsettled, could it be looked for that a foreigner should master new political principles, to which on the Continent there was nothing analogous?[[7]] This, it may be alleged, was not looked for. Salmasius was in the hands of a party; and his prejudices, it may be thought, were confluent with theirs. Not altogether. The most enlightened of the English royalists were sensible of some call for a balance to the regal authority; it cannot be pretended that Hyde, Ormond, or Southampton, wished their king to be the fierce "Io el rey" (so pointedly disowning his council) of Castile, or the "L'état? C'est moi" of France, some few years later. Even for a royalist, it was requisite in England to profess some popular doctrines; and thus far Salmasius fell below his clients. But his capital disqualification lay in his defect of familiarity with the English people, habits, laws, and history.
The English aristocracy furnished a question for drawing all these large varieties of ignorance to a focus. In coming upon the ground of English institutions, Salmasius necessarily began "verba nostra conari," and became the garrulous parrot that Milton represents him. Yet, strange it is, that the capital blunder which he makes upon this subject, was not perceived by Milton. And this reciprocal misunderstanding equally arose in the pre-occupation of their minds by the separate principles on which, for each side, were founded their separate aristocracies. The confusion between the parties arose in connexion with the House of Commons. What was the House of Commons? Salmasius saw that it was contrasted with the House of Lords. But then, again, what were the Lords? The explanation given to him was, that they were the "noblesse" of the land. That he could understand; and, of course, if the other house were antithetically opposed to the Lords, it followed that the House of Commons was not composed of noblesse. But, on the Continent, this was equivalent to saying, that the Commons were roturiers, bourgeois—in fact, mechanic persons, of obscure families, occupied in the lowest employments of life. Accordingly Salmasius wrote his whole work under the most serene conviction that the English House of Commons was tantamount to a Norwegian Storthing, viz. a gathering from the illiterate and labouring part of the nation. This blunder was committed in perfect sincerity. And there was no opening for light; because a continual sanction was given to this error by the aristocratic scorn which the cavaliers of ancient descent habitually applied to the prevailing party of the Roundheads; which may be seen to this hour in all the pasquinades upon Cromwell, though really in his own neighbourhood a "gentleman of worship." But for Salmasius it was a sufficient bar to any doubt arising, that if the House of Commons were not nobles, then were they not gentlemen—since to be a gentleman and to be a titled man or noble, on the Continent, were convertible terms. He himself was a man of titular rank, deriving his title from the territory of Saumaise; and in this needy scholar, behold a nobleman of France! Milton, on the other hand, quite incapable of suspecting that Salmasius conceived himself to stand on a higher level than an English senator of the Commons, and never having his attention drawn to the chasm which universally divides foreign from English nobility, naturally interpreted all the invectives of Salmasius against the Lower House as directed against their principles and their conduct. Thus arose an error, which its very enormity has hitherto screened from observation.
What, then, is this chasm dividing our nobility from that upon the Continent? Latterly that point has begun to force itself upon the attention of the English themselves, as travellers by wholesale on the Continent. The sagacious observers amongst them could not avoid to remark, that not unfrequently families were classed by scores amongst the nobility, who, in England, would not have been held to rank with the gentry. Next, it must have struck them that, merely by their numbers, these continental orders of nobility could never have been designed for any thing higher than so many orders of gentry. Finally, upon discovering that there was no such word or idea as that of gentry, expressing a secondary class distinct from a nobility, it flashed upon them that our important body of a landed gentry, bearing no titular honours of any kind, was inexpressible by any French, German, or Italian word; that upon the whole, and allowing for incommunicable differences, this order of gentry was represented on the Continent by the great mass of the "basse noblesse;" that our own great feudal nobility would be described on the Continent as a "haute noblesse;" and that amongst all these perplexities, it was inevitable for an Englishman to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. For, if he described another Englishman as not being a nobleman, invariably the foreigner would presume it to be meant that he was not a gentleman—not of the privileged class—in fact, that he was a plebeian or roturier, though very possibly a man every way meritorious by talents or public services. Whereas, on the contrary, we English know that a man of most ancient descent and ample estates, one, in the highest sense, a man of birth and family, may choose, on a principle of pride, (and not unfrequently has chosen,) obstinately to decline entering the order of nobility. Take, in short, the well-known story of Sir Edward Seymour, as first reported in Burnet's Own Times; to every foreigner this story is absolutely unintelligible. Sir Edward, at the Revolution, was one, in the vast crowd of country gentlemen presented to the Prince of Orange, (not yet raised to the throne.) The prince, who never had the dimmest conception of English habits or institutions, thought to compliment Sir Edward by showing himself aware of that gentleman's near relationship to a ducal house. "I believe, Sir Edward," said the prince, "that you are of the Duke of Somerset's family?" But Sir Edward, who was the haughtiest of the human race, speedily put an extinguisher on the prince's courtesy by replying, in a roar, "No, your highness: my lord duke is of mine." This was true: Sir Edward, the commoner, was of that branch which headed the illustrious house of Seymour; and the Duke of Somerset, at that era, was a cadet of this house. But to all foreigners alike, from every part of the Continent, this story is unfathomable. How a junior branch should be ennobled, the elder branch remaining not ennobled, that by itself seems mysterious; but how the unennobled branch should, in some sense peculiarly English, bear itself loftily as the depository of a higher consideration (though not of a higher rank) than the duke's branch, this is a mere stone of offence to the continental mind. So, again, there is a notion current upon the Continent, that in England titular honours are put up to sale, as once they really were, by Charles I. in his distresses, when an earldom was sold for L.6000; and so pro rata for one step higher or lower. Meantime, we all know in England how entirely false this is; and, on the other hand, we know also, and cannot but smile at the continental blindness to its own infirmity, that the mercenary imputation which recoils from ourselves, has, for centuries, settled upon France, Germany, and other powers. More than one hundred and thirty thousand French "nobles," at the epoch of the Revolution, how did most of them come by their titles? Simply by buying them in a regular market or bazar, appointed for such traffic. Did Mr St——, a respectable tailor, need baronial honours? He did not think of applying to any English minister, though he was then actually resident in London; he addressed his litanies to the chancery of Austria. Did Mr ——, the dentist, or Mr R——, the banker, sigh for aristocratic honours? Both crossed the Channel, and marketed in the shambles of France and Germany.
Meantime the confusion, which is inveterate upon this subject, arose out of the incompatible grounds upon which the aristocracies of England and the Continent had formed themselves. For the continental there seemed to exist no exclusive privilege, and yet there was one. For the English there existed practically a real privilege, and yet in law there was none. On the Continent, no titled order had ever arisen without peculiar immunities and powers, extending oftentimes to criminal jurisdictions; but yet, by that same error which has so often vitiated a paper currency, the whole order, in spite of its unfair privileges, was generally depreciated. This has been the capital blunder of France at all times. Her old aristocracy was so numerous, that every provincial town was inundated with "comptes," &c.; and no villager even turned to look on hearing another addressed by a title. The other day we saw a return from the Legion of Honour: "Such in these moments, as in all the past," France, it appeared, had already indorsed upon this suspicious roll not fewer than forty-nine thousand six hundred and odd beneficiaries. Let the reader think of forty-nine thousand six hundred Knights of the Bath turned loose upon London. Now ex adverso England must have some virtual and operative privilege for her nobility, or else how comes it, that in any one of our largest provincial towns—towns so populous as to have but four rivals on the Continent— a stranger saluted seriously by the title of "my lord," will very soon have a mob at his heels? Is it that the English nobility can dispense with immunities from taxation, with legal supremacies, and with the sword of justice; in short, with all artificial privileges, having these two authentic privileges from nature—stern limitation of their numbers, and a prodigious share in the most durable of the national property? Vainly does the continental noble flourish against such omnipotent charters the rusty keys of his dungeon, or the sculptured image of his family gallows. Power beyond the law is not nobility, is not antiquity. Tax-gatherers, from the two last centuries, have been the founders of most titled houses in France; and the prestige of antiquity is, therefore, but rarely present. But were it otherwise, and that a "noblesse" could plead one uniform descent from crusaders, still, if they were a hundred thousand strong—and, secondly, had no property—and, thirdly, comprehended in their lists a mere gentry, having generally no pretensions at all to ancient or illustrious descent, they would be—nothing. And exactly on that basis reposes the difference between the Continent and England. Eternally the ridiculous pretence of being "noble" by family, seems to claim for obscure foreigners some sort of advantage over the plain untitled Englishman; but eternally the travelled Englishman recollects, that, so far as this equivocal "nobility" had been really fenced with privileges, those have been long in a course of superannuation; whilst the counter-vailing advantages for his own native aristocracy are precisely those which time or political revolutions never can superannuate.
Thus far as to the constitution of the British nobility and those broad popular distinctions which determine for each nobility its effectual powers. The next point is, to exhibit the operation of these differential powers in the condition of manners which they produce. But, as a transitional stage lying between the two here described—between the tenure of our aristocracy as a casual principle, and the popular working of our aristocracy as an effect—we will interpose a slight notice of the habits peculiar to England by which this effect is partly sustained.