The Ancien Regime | Page 5

important--the difference between the pretender and
the honest man.
The causes of this state of society, which is peculiar to Britain, must be
sought far back in the ages. It would seem that the distinction between
"earl and churl" (the noble and the non-noble freeman) was crushed out
in this island by the two Norman conquests- -that of the Anglo-Saxon
nobility by Sweyn and Canute; and that of the Anglo-Danish nobility
by William and his Frenchmen. Those two terrible calamities,
following each other in the short space of fifty years, seem to have
welded together, by a community of suffering, all ranks and races, at
least south of the Tweed; and when the English rose after the storm,
they rose as one homogeneous people, never to be governed again by
an originally alien race. The English nobility were, from the time of
Magna Charta, rather an official nobility, than, as in most continental
countries, a separate caste; and whatever caste tendencies had
developed themselves before the Wars of the Roses (as such are certain
to do during centuries of continued wealth and power), were crushed
out by the great revolutionary events of the next hundred years.
Especially did the discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle
with Spain, the outburst of commerce and colonisation during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James, help toward this good result. It was in
vain for the Lord Oxford of the day, sneering at Raleigh's sudden
elevation, to complain that as on the virginals, so in the State, "Jacks
went up, and heads went down." The proudest noblemen were not

ashamed to have their ventures on the high seas, and to send their
younger sons trading, or buccaneering, under the conduct of low-born
men like Drake, who "would like to see the gentleman that would not
set his hand to a rope, and hale and draw with the mariners." Thus
sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe bodily labour,
which the educated class of no nation save our own has ever felt; and
which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home or abroad.
Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the ballad sets
forth) the squire's son might be a "'prentice good," and marry
"The bailiff's daughter dear That dwelt at Islington,"
without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the
scutcheon of his ancestors. That which has saved England from a
central despotism, such as crushed, during the eighteenth century, every
nation on the Continent, is the very same peculiarity which makes the
advent of the masses to a share in political power safe and harmless;
namely, the absence of caste, or rather (for there is sure to be a moral
fact underlying and causing every political fact) the absence of that
wicked pride which perpetuates caste; forbidding those to intermarry
whom nature and fact pronounce to be fit mates before God and man.
These views are not mine only. They have been already set forth so
much more forcibly by M. de Tocqueville, that I should have thought it
unnecessary to talk about them, were not the rhetorical phrases,
"Caste," "Privileged Classes," "Aristocratic Exclusiveness," and
such-like, bandied about again just now, as if they represented facts. If
there remain in this kingdom any facts which correspond to those
words, let them be abolished as speedily as possible: but that such do
remain was not the opinion of the master of modern political
philosophy, M. de Tocqueville.
He expresses his surprise "that the fact which distinguishes England
from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light on her
peculiarities, . . . has not attracted more attention, . . . and that habit has
rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English themselves--that
England was the only country in which the system of caste had been
not only modified, but effectually destroyed. The nobility and the

middle classes followed the same business, embraced the same
professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with each
other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman" (and this, if true of the
eighteenth century, has become far more true of the nineteenth) "could
already, without disgrace, marry a man of yesterday." . . .
"It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more
prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It would have
been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long time
past, no nobility, properly so called, have existed, if we take the word
in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained." . . .
"For several centuries the word 'gentleman'" (he might have added,
"burgess") "has altogether changed its meaning in England; and the
word 'roturier' has ceased to