ETIQUETTE.
THE exceeding wrath with which some of our politicians warn Lord Salisbury that he will be held accountable at
the General Election for permitting Cardinal Manning to be named on a Royal Commission as second only in rank to the Prince of Wales, which is evidently regarded as an act of treachery to the Protestantism of our Protestant Constitution, seems to us misplaced. It is not anti-Protestant to treat a Roman Catholic Cardinal with a little honorific formality, for that is a matter of etiquette, and of course there is nothing more difficult than to give any adequate rationale of any eti- quette. It is easy to say that, the Sovereign being the fountain
of 'honour in this country, any honour which is conferred by her should take precedence of any honour conferred by alien autho- rities to whom we owe no obedience. But as a matter of fact, etiquette does not usually go on that principle at all. It is generally etiquette to award to foreigners the sort of rank which they claim, without examining into the subject of their strict title or legal claim to that rank, unless, indeed, there be strong grounds for suspecting any sort of imposture; and if there were such grounds, you would hardly place them voluntarily in honourable positions at all. We suppose that the late Bishop of Lincoln's refusal to allow a Dissenting clergyman to be des- cribed as " Reverend" on a tombstone in one of the Lincolnshire churchyards, would be thoroughly defensible froth the doctrinal point of view which Bishop Wordsworth occupied, but it would hardly be regarded as the natural outcome of social etiquette. Etiquette usually loves to estimate strangers to whom you are intending to be gracious, very much at their own valuation. If a German Prince be at your board, you hardly venture to place him amongst the English Commoners, on the ground that his rank has no recognition in England, and that for all English purposes he has no rank at all- If Prince Bismarck comes to England this year, will any of his hosts think of putting an English Baronet, or even an English Baron or Earl, above him ? Perhaps it would be said that of course this is so; but that in the case of an English subject whose rank no English law recognises at all, it would be as wrong to concede that rank, as it would be to let the Iron Cross or the Golden Fleece conferred on an Englishman by foreign potentates count for as much as an English Garter or Grand Cross of the Bath. Yet we venture to think that, apart of course
from formal Court rules, and as a matter of mere etiquette, it would be in much better taste to waive the English dignity in deference to the foreign dignity, so long at least as both had a certain distinction and honour in the world. The whole question of etiquette is a question of tinsel. It is not real distinction which etiquette so carefully appraises, but the world's estimations. It is not etiquette to ignore the world's appraisements. It would not do to put the Dissenting milliliter above the Archbishop, any more than it would do to put the artisan above the Privy Councillor, or the barrister above the Judge. But where there is any reasonable doubt about what the world would think, where one world would give the preference to the English dignity, and another world to the foreign, it would clearly be good taste in the English world to make much of the foreign dignity, and in the foreign world to make much of the English. We have not the least idea who was responsible for putting the name of the Roman Catholic Cardinal before those of the English Archbishop and the English Peers ; but so far from regarding it as a slur upon
• English Protestantism, we should simply regard it as an act of proud indifference to English claims, and proud renuncia- tion of them in favour of a rank which we do not legally acknowledge, but which we have no sort of objection to concede as a matter of outward form. We suspect that the natural feeling which breathes in all etiquette would concede it. Would any English lady like to compel a Greek Archimandrite to give place to an English Archdeacon ? or even to ask an English Cardinal of the Church of Rome to move lower down her table than the Archbishop of her own Church ? The very essence of etiquette is to yield to any good excuse you can find for treating some one who is less closely connected with you as of higher standing than those who are more closely connected with you; and the notion of regarding the deference paid to a Cardinal as a sort of treachery to Protestantism, is like the notion of regarding the deference paid to a new acquaintance as a sort of treachery to home. For purposes of etiquette at least, all is gold that glitters ; only you are much more stringent in testing the gold that belongs to you than you are in testing the gold that does not. In Ireland, we doubt not even Catholic Home-rule Bishops would be eager to give place to an English Protestant Bishop who was their companion ; and in England, an English Protestant Bishop would, we hope, give place to an Irish Catholic Bishop who happened to be in his company. After all, the order in which the names of the great are enumerated is no index to their real power and influence. It only represents the estimate of what we may call the average world, as modified by the instincts of politeness which induce those who enumerate, to make the most of those to whom their homage is formal rather than real. You enumerate the Archbishops before the Bishops, because they are really of higher rank, and there is no excuse for altering the actual relations. But when once you have to compare the dignitaries of different Churches, good breeding suggests that you should make rather more than less of the dignitaries you do not in your heart revere, and less rather than more of those to whom you are bound to yield your per- sonal homage. That was, we suppose, the reason that induced the official who drew up the list of the Commission to put Cardinal Manning, who has no authority at all over the immense majority of English subjects, before the Archbishop of Canter- bury, who is the Primate of all England. The last thing, we imagine, that the electors of England would think of at the polls, would be that there is any disloyalty in such a politeness to the Church which we no longer fear, and which is doing so much good work amongst us. The fiery Protestant who thinks it will go ill with the Ministry for their subserviency to the Roman Church, will hardly succeed in persuading his sup- porters that he is not himself much more seriously afraid of the encroachments of the Church of Rome, than the easy- going man, whoever it may have been, who was so ready to concede all the honorific position that could possibly be expected of us, to the clergy of another Church.
After all, etiquette is a mere lubricant of the order of society, and, like the pouring of oil on disturbed waves, it is a device for smoothing over a number of disturbing elements of which it is not desirable to think too much, and which it is neverthe- less not desirable to ignore. Etiquette must ratify formally the estimates of the world; but wherever there is any question as to what the estimates of the world are, it should solve the problem in the manner that magnifies most the claims of others, and makes least of our own. Above all, it should regard the whole problem as a light and not a serious one,— as a mere question of yielding easily the first place to the claimant for whom the most plausible claim can be made out. Etiquette fails if it is taken too seriously, fails in the very business for which it is most wanted,—the smoothing of the intercourse of society and the due manipulation of its forms. Without fixed honorific standards, there would be no comfort at all ; but without a certain liberality, ease, and pliancy in interpreting these standards, an ease which can never be secured if too much stress is laid upon literalness, questions of form are turned into serious matters of anxious and jealous debate, and the whole atmosphere of society becomes opprAssive and thunderous.
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