LORD DARNLEY ON "FEUDAL TIES."
THERE are many funny things in the correspondence be-
tween Lord Darnley and the Mayor of Gravesend, but perhaps the funniest is the Earl's perfect unconsciousness of the price he is asking for his land, or of the true nature of the system he is so anxious to uphold. Mr. W. Lake, it appears, the Mayor in question, thirty-three years ago hired a farm called Chalk, on the Cobham-Hall estate, belonging to Lord Darnley, the present representative of the Blighs, a considerable Irish family, founded by a City man, who, nearly 200 years ago, was sent over to manage some confiscated properties. Mr. Lake managed his holding very well, kept it, as his landlord allows, "in good care and culture," paid his rent regularly, and so prospered that, finding Char unhealthy, he settled in Graves- end, and this year was elected Mayor of that prosperous borough. It would seem from that little history, which Lord Darnley does not question' that Mr. Lake was--except as to non-residence on his farm, for reasons which his landlord ad- mitted to be sufficient—a model tenant, one who, in a long course of years, benefits his landlord much more than his land- lord benefits him, and whom most owners of land would be very glad to secure. That, however, is not precisely the opinion of Mr. Lake's landlord. Lord Darnley had a dispute with the officers of the West Kent Yeomanry, of the merits of which we know nothing, but which in- duced him to resign the command of the corps, and to consider himself an ill-used man, whose friends ought to ex- press their sympathy with his side in the dispute. Most of Lord Darnley's tenants did so, and resigned their posts in the corps, but Mr. Lake did not ; he even said, as rumour goes, that in his opinion Lord Darnley was in the wrong, and Mr. Lake's son, who was a private in the corps, continued to perform his unpaid duty to the State. To Lord Darnley this appeared a grave offence' not only in the Yeoman himself, who was merely doing his duty in declining to resign an unpaid post from personal motives, but in his father, who did not influence —that is, compel—his son to prefer hi:landlord to his Queen. R seems almost incredible to dwellers in cities, but Lord Darnley actually wrote to his tenant, Mr. Lake, who is unprotected by a lease, suggesting that he had failed in his feudal duty, and ought to resign his holding. We must give the letter entire and commend it to all who think Mr. Trollope's picture of the Marquis of Trowbridge, the well-mean- ing English landlord, in "The Vicar of Bullhampton," is in any way a caricature :— ‘. March 30, 18n.
" DEAR S/R,—My meaning was this. Contrary to the practice on this, and I should suppose, on every other estate that has any preten- sion to be well regulated, I consented to your retaining one of my best farms, notwithstanding your change of residence. I did this in con- sideration of the supposed unhealthiness of the locality of Chalk, and of your being, as I fully allow that you always have been, a good tenant as to care and culture. My reward for this has been that upon the first occasion that arose your son has singled himself out from the body of my tenantry to attach himself to colours to which I am well known not to be friendly, and which the rest of the tenants and tenants' sons con- sidered themselves bound as a matter of good taste '(this was the expres- sion of one of them) and good-feeling towards their landlord, to abandon 01 their own accord. Of course this was a very marked exception, and one that cannot have failed to attract attention, and it is impossible for roe not to feel that it has been so in consequence of that change of re- sidence above alluded to, whereby you have entered upon a position and formed associations different from the tenant-farmers on the estate generally ; and if I mistake not—I write this subject to correction— your own tone on the subject in question has not been in harmony with that of the other tenants. I must add that you have not honoured me with your company at the tenants' dinner since 1871, and have only been present once at the last five dinners. Now what I wish to suggest for your consideration is how far any person has a right thus to-main- tain a position of isolation under such circumstances. It is the char. actoristic of the tenantry on the large estates in this country that-they are not mere rentpayers or customers for the commodity called laud, but, on the contrary, retain just so much of feudal tradition as, without compromising their due independence, serves to establish some kind of sympathy of sentiment and identity of interest between themselves and their landlord ; and it appears to me to be a fair matter of consideration how far any person who prefers to disregard that kind of understanding is justified in keeping out some one else who would not disregard it.
"I remain, yours very faithfully,
"Mr. W. Lake. DARNLEY."
There is perfect sincerity in every line of that letter, which was immediately after acted on by a notice to quit. The Earl is neither ill-tempered, nor sarcastic, nor forgetful to acknowledge his tenant's claim to be a thoroughly good culti- vator—indeed, goes out of his way to say how well, like the "Northern farmer," he has done "his duty by the lond—" but is honestly convinced that he has been wronged in not receiving besides his rent a price which it would be most immoral to pay— Mr. Lake being asked to decide against a body of officers whom he thinks in the right, and to use paternal influence against his own judgment—and which his Lordship himself would never dream of paying to anybody. He asks, almost in so many words, that his tenant should pay him a feudal obedience ; that the landlord's enemies should, even without or against his own reason, be the tenant's enemies ; that he should coerce his eon to the same obedience ; that even duty to the State should give way to duty to the lord of the soil. He does not put this forward as pretension, or as- sumption, or a piece of brag of any kind, but as an inner con- viction of his own mind, so powerful that he thinks Mr. Lake must see its justice and be, at all events, slightly ashamed of having so grievously failed, even from good motives, in so clear a duty. He would not perform the duty himself. If the Duke of Westminster, in letting Lord Darnley a town house, demanded that he should quit any Ministry which affronted the House of Grosvenor, or any regiment from which the Duke had retired, or any club in which the Duke was un- popular, Lord Darnley would refuse the terms, and probably doubt the Duke's sanity ; or if the terms were stated to him in the middle of a lease, would inveigh heartily, and as most men would think, with good cause, against an attempted oppression. When, however, the tenant is a mere farmer, who has become a prosperous citizen, custom, tradition, and habitual freedom from resistance among social inferiors are too strong for in- dependent thought of any kind, and the Earl instinctively feels wronged by conduct which, in his own case he would consider not only proper, but indispensable to his self-respect. And there are thousands of great landlords, perhaps a'majority of great landlords, who agree with Lord Darnley. They might not perhaps push their theory so far as to demand from any one neglect of his duty to the State—we suspect Lord Darnley himself would acknowledge an oversight there—and they cer- tainly would not express their views with such naif outspoken- ness, but they would agree with him that they expected from rural tenants an observance extending to a cordial submission of the will, as their due, and part of the consideration for their graciousness in letting them plough the land. That agreement, rarely expressed, but always understood, is the secret of much of our English politics,—of the difficultry of making any reasonable arrangement for our franchise, of the greater difficulty of making Liberals think that any alliance is possible between them and the great country Squires. What is to be done with landlords who have an inner creed like Lord Darnley's, or tenants who do not revolt against it,—with classes who accept without a question so base a foundation for society as the tenancy of land Base ? Well, what is the foundation assumed in these letters, and by all who agree with Lord Darnley, except that the foundation of society is the profit to be made out of a farm ? Lord Darnley does not claim deference from Mr. Lake on the ground of any law, or of any general custom of the nation outside the rather small class of tenant-farmers, or of Mr. Lake's status of tenant-farmer, or of any social superiority in himself, but only because he has let Mr. Lake a particular piece of land. If Mr. Lake had been a freeholder, he would not have dreamed of scolding him for not censuring his son for continuing to hold a place in the West Kent 'Yeomanry. it is solely as lessor of the soil of Chalk that he, owner of Cobham Hall, considers himself entitled to such homage from those to whom Chalk is let, and surely title to obedience never had stranger foundation. It comes to this,—that if farming, like so many other trades, became an unprofitable occupation—it would become one, if emigration among labourers set in furiously—and three landlords were seeking one tenant, rural society in England would go to pieces. No deferences could then be exacted or would be by Lord Darnley himself, and in the judgment of those who approve the system there would be in rural districts social anarchy. So far, that is, from county society being based upon something better than "a nexus of mere cash payment," as Mr. Carlyle calls it, it is based upon the hope of profit more than any other, the moral obligation to obey arising from the payment of rent, and the moral title to claim obedience being the right of choice among bidders for land. A man who pays no rent owes no homage, while a landlord who does not receive his rent finds the homage offered in its stead no bond. Lord Darnley, and all who think with him, appeal to the feudal tie as if it were, especially when softened and mellowed by modern manners, something nobler as well as firmer than a mere tie of contract, and we are not concerned just now to dispute their position. The intense individualism of to-day may turn out in the end not to be good for anybody, not even for those who confuse, as so many do, isolation with freedom. But then the feudal tie must be a real, and not a purely accidental relation. A feudal tie supemdded upon an accidental money payment scrupulously exacted and declared indispensable is an absurdity, and a source of weakness to any society which en- courages it, and which is thereby left at the mercy of every caprice of fortune, at the sport of leaders who are entitled to be leaders merely because they have accumulated cash. There is no nobility whatever in an arrangement which compels a man to follow as a moral duty because he does not own a particular spot--for a Rothschild might be a tenant—and enables a leader to claim leadership as a right because he has invested his cash just there. The most tyrannical theory of worship due to the State, and obedience to its laws, and deference to its officers, is nobler than the reverence for the casual employment of the accidental money-bag which is implied in the muddle called "modern feudalism," a system as devoid of the nobleness it claims as it is of the permanency, which it is apt, from accidental circumstances, to attribute to itself. There is no permanency in it whatever. Is Mr. Lake to obey John Nokes, if John sells cart-grease so exten- sively that he can buy Cobham Hall Yes'? Then our social system is so utterly bad, that it would be justifiable for the nation to sanction confiscation in mere self-defence, nd as an assertion of its right to exist in grandeur. No ? Then what sense is there in this allegation of a "feudal tie" arising out of the relation of landlord and tenant, which may arise or cease any day from the fall of an auctioneer's hammer? We can understand a man saying, "I and my fathers have always
led you well, and it is your social duty to try my leadership before plunging into the unknown," but a leadership based on auction-purchases is to us either imbecile or monstrous. The aristocratic principle is a feeble one enough for a nation to guide itself by, but the principle of blindly obeying leaders because they have invested cash in the spot where you wish to live and work is feeble to ignominiousness.
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