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9H^ THE LEADER. ¦ • rFS^TOKDiT ^ '
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THE GOVERNING CLASSES. No. V. THE EARL O...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Final Solution Of The Russian Questi...
uttermost dregs ; she has maintained a dignified attitude ; an < Tshe is supported by an enthusiastic population eager for the punishment of an insolent invader . Immediate war , therefore , possesses but few terrors for the Crescent , whilst a protracted military attitude during a period wasted in fruitless and insincere negotiation ,, is fraught , with proximate destruction . ? Russia and Austria cannot but be aware of the
natural policy of the Western powers in the event of actual hostilities ; that policy consists in fighting those countries with their own discontented subjects . Poland , Finland , Hungary , Italy , the Caucasus , and Georgia present | a catalogue of imposing populations , dissatisfied with their rulers , and eager , nay burning , for an opportunity to throw off the yoke that weighs so heavily upon them . Persia and Turkey , in conjunction with the Caucasus , could play a brilliant part upon the Caspian and Black seas . To the north Russia has nothing but enemies , and towards
Europe the populations constituting her motley Empire writhe under her oppressive exactions . That Austria will join Russia in the event of war appears almost certain , although the blindness and folly of so suicidal a policy is perfectly apparent to all but those who are most deeply concerned . But Austria , with Hungary and Italy revolutionised , is nearly , if not quite , powerless . It is Prussia alone that would throw a decided preponderance into the despotic scale , and apart from the facts that Prussia lias long-past Russian aggressions to avenge , her policy and her very existence
have derived their strength from hostility to Austria . If we were to commence by announcing this to be a war of principles , we should certainly have all . the despotic powers for enemies . In the course of a war , however , we must avail ourselves of every principle at hand . But our Governing Classes would never dare to enter into calculations such as these , for when liberal nations are directed by men whose lives have been one long barren sympathy with absolutist powers , neither courage against injustice , nor honour as opposed to despotism , can be expected at their hands .
The poisonous Greek Empire notion should be earnestly discouraged by every true lover of freedom and justice : for , apart from the fact that the Greeks are thoroughly incapable and corrupt , and that their Government is a feeble caricature of absolutism , with all its evils intensified on a petty scale , the Greeks are notoriously inclined towards Russia . The establishment , if possible , and it is not , of a weak and divided Greek Empire , and it must inevitably be both , would conduce to nothing but the ultimate sovereignty of the Czar over the entire country now occupied by Turkey in Europe , by Greece
and by the Grecian Archipelago . It is , in fact , a Russian as well as a Greek idea , and is supported by both parties . 'Die great gun , indeed , of both these parties is laboured misrepresentation of the Turkish Government . The ameliorations which have confessedly rendered Turkey one of the most tolerant countries of Europe are misrepresented , denied , or treated as fables , notwithstanding the testimony of all intelligent travellers and the dicta of statesmen . The various churches the varioiia religious communities , not merely tolerated by the Porte , but protected , all go for nothing . Austria , forsooth , is tolerant , and Russia civilized . Alpha .
9h^ The Leader. ¦ • Rfs^Tokdit ^ '
9 H ^ THE LEADER . ¦ rFS ^ TOKDiT ^
The Governing Classes. No. V. The Earl O...
THE GOVERNING CLASSES . No . V . THE EARL OF CAKMSLK . Tjik career of the Earl of Carlisle is in exquisite consonance with the motto of his house : " Volo non Valco ;* ' and ho is one of the most popular men in this country because of tho Volo , despite the non Valco . To be a I ' eor of tho Realm , with all the blood of all tho Howards in our veins , gives one an enormous advantage in tho cultivation ' of an ambition to please ; and one is sure at least of the triumph accorded to the good intention . But tho reward is given as much in pity as in acknowledgment ; and if one fails , there is the more pity , becaiiHo of tho rank from which one has descended to tho degradation of Hooking popularity . " All the blood of all the Howards " cannot ennoblo sots , or fools , or cowards ; but to have all tho blood of all the IIowards ia still an ndvantago if one would consent to confine . one ' tt pretensiona to that , Italian , who would not
deign to be a prince , and who couldn't be a king , but was still proud of being Rohan , was a sensible fellow ; he knew the certain advantage , and was resolute on keeping it , and on not risking it by competitions . And , at any rate , Rohan never thought of competitions downwards . The manners of a . century may modify the bravados of " blood . " In our day , Montalemberi is lecturing at the Institute , and the last of our Plantagenets is Chairman of the London and
North Western Rail way Board . Rohan , therefore , might , in this day , consent to be a savant , or philosopher , or a millionaire , and ' a Howard may not necessarily betray his caste if he enters into lecture-room lists with Mr . Gough , Mr . Silk Buckingham , or Dr . Lardner . He may not necessarily degrade himself and his order—that is , if he succeed . But if he does not succeed—if only a lecturer among lords , not a lord among lecturers , then he is a failure as a Howard , whose pretensions he has abdicated , and he is a mediocrity as an orator Gough .
If our aristocracy were real and substantial , and felt itself safe , it would be still exclusive , defiant , self-reliant . But because it suspects that it is a delusion , and a shaky one , it descends from its upper atmosphere , and attempts the vulgar contentions of a struggling community . Our feudal barons were proud of being unable to read or write ; their function on earth was not the clerk ' s function . The descendants of our feudal barons
( descendants , but not issue ) seem to consider that they have no functions , and they attempt to demonstrate right to the first place by—being as clever as small litterateurs . That they quite mistake their position is perfectly clear , since no one can have properly studied this country without perceiving that it willingly permits the classes "who own the land to govern the realm . The Howards and Russells —' the aristocracyexist by implied capacity for government , and they ruin themselves and their caste by destro 3 Mng their prestige—by elaborate proofs that they are
only mediocrities . To the philosophic , their tendency to compete with the chance talents of society suggests their uneasiness in a false position , in which they do not sufficiently rely on the thorough baseness of British kind vaguely loving lords . On tlie crowd they force the thought that if a lord is inferior to Mr . Gough , Mr . Gough , perhaps , should not be added to the ferce naturce , as an attraction at the Surrey Zoological Gardens temperance fetes , and that , on the other hand , the Earl de Trop , K . G . B ., has no right to look so enormously wise , comprehensive , contemptuous , and grand .
Ihe crowd is , on this point , slow of conviction . Since they discovered that Robert Boyle , because he was the brother of the Earl of Cork , was the father of chemistry , they have always magnified the merits of nobles who have attempted a justification of their titular nobility . Coaxed into suicide with such encouragement , the present generation of lords and ladies are busy in the effort to illustrate an artistic , literary , and scientific century : and the result is , the complete
condemnation ot tho aristocracy of this enlightened country . No argument will be used here to suggest that all men of genius are the sons of tinkers—the majority of successes in English literature having been the successes of well-born , well-bred , gentlemen But the consecutive disasters of literary nobles are at once appalling and ludicrous ; and , failing in books , they call in question their right to bo the governing class , a right which otherwise the governed class would not call in question . There arc able men who cannot write books ,
because write a book requires a special training , and a professional knack : but tho man who , not wanting bread , writes books which are not good books , . supplies absolute proof * that he is a man who , mediocre in literature , would bo mediocre in everything . Richelieu would have come down to us as a man of # onius if he had not written idiotic tragedicK—all tho more idiotic that ho was advanced in ago mid power , when ho ant down to be
an author ; and Lord John Russell might , in his manhood , iiMpiro awo among his countrymen , but that carlior in lifo ho wrote a play that wan damned , and a history which circulated nil over Europe—as trunk lining . Pygmalion ' s statue ( it is a pity she didn't keep a diary ) was , no doubt , an absurd and n common-place female , oven in tho eyes of Pygmalion , alter she ceased to bo a statue . I ' eorB who descend from their pedestal , run juat tho risk of turning out vulgar and atupid ,
like the majority of the classes into which they have condescendingly intruded . Byron was only a lord by an accident ; and his genius only proves the rule , to the discredit of his order— -as Wellington in another direction . It may be a question if there has been even in politics a great man among the peers—peers by bii-th—shice the king-maker ' s time ; but what will not for a moment be contested , is , that there has not been a clever literary lord ( with Byron ' s exception ) since Chesterfield ' s time . Certainly , as lecturers and litterateurs , they are terrible mediocrities in our day . Lord Mahon stands first ; and he is about as clever and as profound among historians as
Mr . Macfarlane or Miss Strickland . Lord John Manners is first among the poets of the peerage * and , perhaps , in the whole course of human affairs no man ever indited such imbecility ain has been printed under the name of Lord Jo hn Manners . Need the list be lengthened ? What is to be said of an " order" of which Lord John Manners , Lord William Lennox , Lord Ellesniere are the most illustrious literary ornaments ? To mention all the noble authors would require careful cataloguing of the peerage .. .. They all travel these men ; and write ; and they are all neglected ' the women ; and write . And not only do they not obtain great , they do not obtain moderate successes . The class has not produced one original veritable , book . '
Lord Carlisle , a man of impressionable nature , and sure to be the victim of circumstances , has followed the fashion of his class , and has been both the literary man and the lecturer . Like , other lords who have gone down among the multitude to talk grammatically and simulate sympathy , he has been well received , and has at-, tained , after twenty years canvassing , something like a position of " popularity . ' * For that he has worked very hard ;—sustained in the acting of the necessary part by . the conviction that , thus , he was bringing the aristocracy en rapport , with the democracy , —in a word , it is the policy of the
whigs , —that he was saving his order , which was never in danger . In this way Lord Carlisle has been thrown out as a tirailleur by the great Whig families ; and he has skirmished with the people , in lecture-rooms and at public dinners , with considerable success . To give him , in the lectureroom and the jmblic banquet-room , the greater weight , the high Whig families have accorded him some subordinate offices of Government ; made him Secretary for Ireland , because he has just the character to " " a restive but barbarous race ; and Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster , because that is an office which would leave time to
coquet with the democracy . But his metier has been , not in the cabinet , but in the crowded and odorous halls , where the enlightened but not perfumed democracy collect , savage for first principles and enthusiastic for peers . Beautiful are the orations which Lord Carlisle then delivers . Precisel y of that cultivated calibre of mind which finds its expression graceful and facile , Lord Carlisle , well prepared , pours out the most exquisitely sonorous speeches , the modulation perfect , the manner artistic . The sentences are often
neatly , epigrammatically cut , —his Lordship reada a good deal ;—the whole style is elegant , p leasant , impressive . There is no speaker more successful : an audience , even a well-educated audience , is wrapt in listening to him ; and he is cheered [ a peer—and grammatical !] nearly as warmly as Mr . Gough is cheered by the enlightened Britons whoso real passion for sentiment is preferable to gin . But what does Lord Carlisle say ? I baye heard and read many columns from Lord Carlisle ; but I haven't much idea what Lord Carlisle ever
says . Ho ways , generally speaking , that human nature is a wonderful and most mysterious thing * , that it is good to bo good , that smellfl ia towns ought to be got rid of , that juvenile offenders would not be criminals if they were Christians , that the soul of man expands under free audiconstitutional Government , that Roman Catholic * would bo better Liberals if they were less Tories , and that l ' opo in an author Avorth reading . That is the
impression I have of Lord Carlisle ' s social , politics il and literary philosophy ; and it is faultless ; and theso fmo generalities , which it is ho handsome ia a peer to concede , toll better on tho audiences ho likes than the moat analytical or rational rhetoric . Ho acquired , thus , the reputation of being a liberal man , a gemuous-minded man , " y our true sort of nobleman , sir . " And ho ho tsiilihuvnl man , and a gmiuroiiB-inimlud man . Lord Carlinlo luw talked himself , and haa been cheered into , a
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 8, 1853, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08101853/page/14/
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