First, it is in the nobility of Great Britain that the Conservative principle—which cannot but be a momentous agency wheresoever there is any thing good to protect from violence, or any thing venerable to uphold in sanctity—is chiefly lodged. Primogeniture and the church are the two corner-stones upon which our civil constitution ultimately reposes; and neither of these, from the monumental character of our noble houses, held together through centuries by the peculiar settlements of their landed properties, has any power to survive the destruction of a distinct patrician order.
Secondly, though not per se, or, in a professional sense, military as a body, (Heaven forbid that they should be so!) yet, as always furnishing a disproportionate number from their order to the martial service of the country, they diffuse a standard of high honour through our army and navy, which would languish in a degree not suspected whenever a democratic influence should thoroughly pervade either. It is less for what they do in this way, than for what they prevent, that our gratitude is due to the nobility. However, even the positive services of the nobility are greater in this field than a democrat is aware of. Are not all our satirical novels, &c., daily describing it as the infirmity of English society, that so much stress is laid upon aristocratic connexions? Be it so: but do not run away from your own doctrine, O democrat! as soon as the consequences become startling. One of these consequences, which cannot be refused, is the depth of influence and the extent of influence which waits upon the example of our nobles. Were the present number of our professional nobles decimated, they would still retain a most salutary influence. We have spoken sufficiently of the ruin which follows where a nation has no natural and authentic leaders for her armies. And we venture to add our suspicion—that even France, at this moment, owes much of the courage which marks her gentry, though a mere wreck from her old aristocracy, to the chivalrous feeling inherited from her ancestral remembrances. Good officers are not made such by simple constitutional courage; honour, and something of a pure gentlemanly temper, must be added.
Thirdly, for all populous and highly civilized nations, it is an indirect necessity made known in a thousand ways, that some adequate control should preside over their spirit of manners. This can be effected only through a court and a body of nobles. And thence it arises, that, in our English public intercourse, through every class, (even the lowest of the commercial,) so much of respectful gravity and mutual consideration is found. Now, therefore, as the means of maintaining in strength this aristocratic influence, we request every thoughtful man to meditate upon the following proposition. The class even of our gentry breeds a body of high and chivalrous feeling; and very much so by unconscious sympathy with an order above themselves. But why is it that the amenity and perfect polish of the nobility are rarely found in strength amongst the mass of ordinary gentlemen? It is because, in order to qualify a man for the higher functions of courtesy, he ought to be separated from the strife of the world. The fretful collision with rivalship and angry tempers, insensibly modifies the demeanour of every man. But the British nobleman, intrenched in wealth, enjoys an immunity from this irritating discipline. He is able to act by proxy: and all services of unpleasant contest he devolves upon agents. To have a class in both sexes who toil not, neither do they spin—is the one conditio sine qua non for a real nobility.
Fourthly as the leaders in a high morality of honour, and a jealous sense of the obligation attached to public engagements, our nobility has tightened the bonds of national sensibility beyond what is always perceived. "This is high matter," as Burke says in a parallel case; and we barely touch it. We shall content ourselves with asking—Could the American frauds in the naval war, calling sixty-four-gun ships by the name of frigates, have been suffered in England? Could the American doctrine of repudiation have prospered with us? Yet are the Americans Englishmen, wanting only a nobility.
The times are full of change: it is through the Conservative body itself that certain perils are now approaching patrician order: if that perishes, England passes into a new moral condition, wanting all the protections of the present.
An introduction, prefixed to Holinshed, descriptive of domestic life amongst the English, as it may be presumed to have existed for the century before, (1450-1550,) was written (according to our recollection) by Harrison. Almost a century earlier, we have Chief Justice Fortescue's account of the French peasantry, a record per antiphrasin of the English. About the great era of 1688, we have the sketch of contemporary English civilization by Chamberlayne. So rare and distant are the glimpses which we obtain of ourselves at different periods.