TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE " ARISTOCRACY " AND THE PEOPLE. THE aristocracy, properly so called, and the people are not at war with one another. Nothing strikes us more strongly in the reports of Liberal meetings, and especially of the smaller meetings which come up from all England, than the limitation of the popular anger against the Lords. The people do not hate them as Lords at all, but only as legis- lators. In the largest popular meetings—meetings like the gigantic one at Glasgow on Saturday, which would seem to Continental rulers the immediate precursor of revolution— there was no outbreak, or symptom of an outbreak, against the aristocracy as a caste. A Peer might have attended the meeting in absolute safety ; and, if he had offered to speak from a platform, would have been heard more readily than most other men. Lord Rosebery is nearly as much of a favourite as Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Trevelyan not more popular than Lord Hartington. There has been no sign throughout the agitation of a wish to denounce the Peers as over-wealthy men, or to meddle with their privileges, or to decry their pretensions to social leadership. They are not denounced as "bloated," and when called insolent, it is with reference to a particular pretension alone. We have read recently the speeches at many scores of smaller meetings where the Upper House was denounced in no measured terms, and resolutions passed pro- claiming it" dangerous and useless ;" but we cannot recall one resolution denouncing titles, or protesting against the Peers' exemption from ordinary jurisdiction in cases of felony, or declaring that all subjects of the Crown ought alike to be simple citizens. To all appearance, the people are per- fectly content that there should be a recognised aristocracy, that titles should be conferred and should descend, and that those who bear them should be treated with external social deference ; and the appearance, so far as we can judge, corresponds with the reality. There is no latent popular jealousy of the English hierarchical system. It is still accepted without bitterness, and without any feeling that it is contrary to the principles of equality. The ideas of Continental Radi- cals on the subject are totally absent, the good idea and the bad idea alike. No great body of persons in England envy the dignified, or bear malice against men for enjoying artificial honours, and very few are solicitous to protect that "dignity of the human being," or "right of the citizen," as citizen, to all the respect obtainable which makes thoughtful Continental Liberals, especially in Germany, so savage with caste distinctions. The popular speakers, for the most part, avoid discussing the laws which protect the aristocracy, and not a single plan for the extinction of titles has been so much as mooted. We doubt if the feeling expressed by Mr. Thozold Rogers, that the Lords are in an unusual degree luxurious and dissolute persons, meas with any widespread popular response, and see no reason to believe that the people are at all impressed with the abstract absurdity of the hereditary principle. Their speakers are, very often, but the multitude are not. They see little difference between the inheritance of an estate and of a name. They do not, in fact, make a grievance of the existence in a democratic community of a decorated caste ; but rather accept it as something which hurts no one, and adds some variety to life. They are no more irritated by the fact that a man is called a Lord than by the fact that he has twenty thousand a year. That is his luck, and he is entitled to it ; and if he parades his position or his wealth the people look on, never minding. Their one demand is that the Lords should cease to legislate ; or, at all events, cease to impede the action of the Commons.
We wonder if the Peers perceive this tolerant condition of feeling, and if it helps in any of them to nourish the extra- ordinary belief some of them entertain that the present agitation is unreal, and if it is only resisted with firmness and decision, will gradually die away. We strongly suspect it is so ; and if it is so, no greater mistake as to the condition of opinion was ever made even by a caste. Tne very danger of the Peers is this limitation of the popular wrath, its direction against a substance—the legislative power of the Peers—instead of an abstraction, like aristocratic privilege. An attempt to destroy " aristocracy " in England would be necessarily vague and purposeless. There would be too much to be destroyed, and to much spread through every department of the national life. The attempt would be like trying to remove the gold in quartz, or salt in bricks, with the fingers, and would in a month grow wearisome. Even the more limited effort to abolish titles would, if momentarily popular, speedily waste itself by over- diffusion. It would be easy enough, of course, to put down the use of the "titles," usually so called, in spite of the French failure to accomplish that task, and of the ridiculous failure of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in England itself. They could be suppressed, if the majority wished them suppressed, by the quiet but resistless pressure of heavy taxation, just as the carrying of firearms has often been suppressed. Dukes would not pay £50,000 a year, or Barons £10,000 per annum, for the privilege of bearing sonorous titles, even if the titles secured social deference ; and they would disappear silently, like every other social assumption found to be too burdensome or expen- sive. But no strong effort would be made to secure an end so unreal. It would be felt that it was waste of force, that "The Percy" would have all the social deference of the Duke of Northumberland, and that to produce social equality was a vain endeavour, if only because of its vastness. There is no "business," Englishmen would think, in such a proposal ; but there is business in demanding that titles shall not carry a right to legislate, or, at all events, not to legislate in defiance of the elected representatives. That is an intelligible demand, as intelligible as the demand of 1831. Then, as now, the people rose against the Peers. Then, as now, they demanded. that a great change should be made ; and then, as now, they limited their demand to the concrete and attainable. They did not attack the Lords as Lords. They never bothered. their heads about their titles or social privileges, or the right and wrong of "aristocracy." They were delighted to be led, as to a very surprising degree they were led, by great Peers. They concentrated their grievance against the Peerage in the single word "borough- mongers," and demanded that " boroughmongering," in their own rough sense of the word, should cease. The people, and not the Peers, were to nominate the Commons. That limita- tion, by making their demand and its reasonableness patent to every man, carried it, and for thirty-five years—a whole genera- tion—the people remained content. They were not admitted to power, but the practice of nominating the Commons was abolished ; and in that change, as the popular instinct felt, and as events fully proved, there was a revolution. The demand is now that the Lords cease to resist the Commons, giving a pledge of their sincerity by passing the Franchise Bill without a Dissolution ; and that limited demand will be carried, and will, we fully admit, have results as great, though not, perhaps, as far-reaching, as the first Reform Bill. Day by day the " demonstrations " grow larger—the one at Glasgow on Satur- day probably surpassing any yet held—and day by day the demand grows more concentrated and definite. The Peers must pass the Franchise Bill without a Dissolution. The instant acceptance of the truth that, were the right of com- pelling Dissolutions vested in the Lords, representative Govern- ment would cease, is a curious feature in the struggle, and marks, like the limitation of demand, the practicalness of the people, who, even in the height of a great agitation, know exactly what they want, and cannot be turned aside. Just as they asked in 1831 that the nomination of representatives should cease, so now they ask that interference with the decisions of those representatives should come to a final end. That granted, everything may go on as of old, with the full approval of the people, until once more some practical grievance is sufficiently felt to call out public indignation.
Previous page
