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Jan. 28, 18i)0.J The Leader and Saturday...
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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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Peers An> 15akqnets. Mr. Bright Has Late...
up the peerage , he is " Our right trusty and well-beloved cousin- ^ The earl is served no better than the viscount ; but the marquis is most honourable , our right trusty and entirely beloved cousin , and is a " most noble and puissant prince . " Whilst ^ a . dukeis his grace , " is besides " most noble , " . and is a " most high , noble , and potent prince" into the bargain . -,.,,. , v ,. Now it appears to us that one cannot exhaust the dictionary iipon any set of men , either by way of vituperation or pra . se , without having some effect upon them . Sarah Duchess of Marlborough always lived as a pr incess , and we know now one duchess do \ yager who in her own house , is as great as any queen alive . What Goldsmith said of Englishmen generally—that they had P"de . in their port , defiance in their eye—is essentially true of the English aristocracy : it must be so . We cannot dispute the fact ; we must look for compensating qualities in them . To set apart any class of men as a privileged class is not very consistent with modern progress , nor with true Christianity ; neither is a standing- army , nor a hired advocate . Mr . Biglow hits the right nail on the head , when he
writes of war , — " I kinder thought Christ was agin war and pillage . An' didn't go shootin * folks down in Judee j " wliWi is certainly true . Neither did He establish a privileged class . Nothing can-be more certain , than that He rebuked his disciples for quarrelling for rank and precedence : " Let him who would beehief amon « - you serve the rest . " The Quakers , the Moravians , and the Plymouth brethren totally exclude rank ; and surely these sects are good Christians . What then is the reason that we retain it—possibly find benefit frohi it—certainly bow down to the coronet ?
Tlieve be several reasons . Expediency is perhaps chief of all . Archdeacon Paley , as many a Cambridge man will remember , not only gives his celebrated watch argument in proof of the design of the Creator of the world , but he gives a very curious illustration , that of the pigeon , to establish the utility of kingship . Ihe solid old reasoiier is not more complimentary about the lords ; " The ^ design of a nobility in the British constitution is , " says he , " first to enable the king to reward the servants of the public in a manner most grateful to them , and at a small expense to the public ; secondly , to fortify the regal power by surrounding it with an order of men the ot
niittfhtUv' allied to its interests ; thirdly , to stem progress popular firry . " These reasons are now . somewhat antiquated- We are now pretty well aware that the nobility cannot stem the popular fury : nny , that-the people are no . longer furious , but quite as well if not better informed on most matters than the peers ; but , says our author , " An hereditary nobility invested with a share of legislation is averse to those prejudices which actuate the minds of the vulgar ; accustomed to condemn the clamour of the populace ; disdaining to receive laws and opinions from their inferiors in rank , they will oppose resolutions which are founded in the folly and violence of the lower part of the community !'' , , , whole does
That law of nations , Progress , which the peerage as a not believe in , has changed all this : — " N / ot in vain the distance beacons . Forward , forward let us range , J ^ et the gr eat world Bpin for ever down the ringing grooves of change . The nation now debates , judges , pauses , and reflects , and seldom adopts lhat which is immature . Our neighbours accuse us of slowness , but we know that our sloth is but deliberation . The House of Lords has helped us to gain this character , and the upper chamber of the senate hath more than once saved the nation . It inny be all very well for the Manchester party to call the " Lords " a drag , and to liken them to that waggoner who put the drag on his wliec ' l when he was going up hill ; if the , Lords have now arid then withstood a good measure , they have more often prevented bad ones from nassimr : they have a certain dignified slowness in their
pace , such as grav . e and reverend seigniors sliould have—but on occasions they do their work splendidly , and . reflect a credit on that great constitution of which they form a part , It is right , also , since the people can well afford to allow them , and since they are not excessive , to have their privileges . What they are , Burke shall short lv tell us r- ^ - " Tiie Peerage of the British Empire , " says lie , " illustrious beyond compare by deeds and by descent "—Sir Bernard would use the flame flourish or the nobles of Hesse Honnberg" or the hereditary council of Fiji . —" has many privileges . " . Those , shortly , are : — Freedom from arrest in civil actions ; from attending at juries , courts-loot , or sheriff ' s turns . To bo tried in eases of treason or felony by their peers . To be allowed to give their judgment not on oatli , but on their honour . To be tried in courts erected for the purpose , in Westminster Hall , and at the expense of the crown ; of sitting covered in courts of justice during the proceedings ; of voting
in parliament by proxy ; of wearing robes of dig-mty in parlmmont . Onu tmron , Lord Kinsalo , has the privilege of being covered in the presence of royalty ; lastly , the whole peerage has the privilege of bearing 1 supporters to their arms . All these , in effuct , are favours more in name than in reality , A duko is , after all , as much amenablo to the law as a common man . That the law is expensive is not the peers' fault . The peerage is a high order in the community , ond is recruited from the orders below . This brings us . to tlio important article of descent . Paley , archdeacon and Tory though ho was , objected to Homo of thoir privileges ; but in effect , they do not work badly—a totally worthiest * nobleman does not gain much by belonging to his order . It i « ouly the eyes of the vulgar and smnll-mhidod which are dazzled by tlio glory either of the coronet , the robo , " or the privileged etutipn . As regards descent , in which we learn from our author that the
peerage is " illustrious beyond compare , " we shall find , on turning over the twelve hundred leaves ofBurke , that more than eight-tenths of the nobility claim , like our old friend Christophero Sly , to have come in with " Richard Conqueror , " or , to use Burke ' s words , William the Norman . This claim , small as it is , may , in the great majority of cases , be doubted . That excellent Conservative , Benjamin Disbaeli , in " Couingsby , " set it aside altogether , and asserted that the herald painters who decorate the panels of their lordships ' coaches , knew more of genealogy than the peers themselves . " The question is ; " said Coningsby , " whether a preponderance of the aristocratic principle in a political constitution be conducive to the stability of a state , and whether the peerage , as established in England , generally tends to that end . We must not forget . iri such an estimate the influence which , in this country , is exercised over opinion by ancient lineage . " ¦ . ¦ '
__ _ ... ... "Ancient lineage ! " said Mr . Milbank , " I never heard of a peer with an ancient lineage . The real old families of this couutry are to be found among the peasantry ; the gentry , too ; may lay some claim tp old blood , t can point you out Saxon families in this country who can trace their pedigrees beyond the conquest ; I know of some Norman gentlemen whose fathers , undoubtedly , came over with the Conqueror . But a peer with an ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty . No , no ; the thirty years of the Wars of the Roses freed us from those gentlemen . I take it , after the battle of Tewkesbury , a Norman was an uncommonly scarce animal . " Disraeli is not far from wrong . The belief in ancient lineage may be seductive , but the folly of blood relationship is easily exposed . Granted that we are descended from Alexanders or Agamemnons , it does not follow that we are great , brave , and successful generals . An
illustrious descent . Iike a light at the back of a mean transparency , onlyshows up the faults of a bad man , and can add no honour to a good one . Besides this , as more than sixty peerages . are recently extinct , we may reasonably suppose that all great houses do not have heirs male . Maoatjxay was first and last peer of his house . The Duke of Wellington was not a Wellesley ; his name was Colley ; his grandfather , Richard Colley , assumed the name of Wesley , since euphonised into Wellesley . The Earl of Clarendon is not a Hyde —• paternally , he is a Villiers . The Duke of Northumberland is not a Percy ; his real name is Smithson ; his ancestor . Sir Hugh Smithson , having
received the honours of the house of Percy simply because his wife ' s grandmother was a Percy . The Marquis of Normanby , though Constantihe Phipps , contrived to get a re-creation of the Normandy title belonging to Constantihe Phipps ' s mother ' s first husband . Lord Straffurd is not a Wentworth ; Lord Wilton is not an Egerton ; Lord de Tabley is not a Warren . Earl Nelson is paternally a Bolton ; his father was Thomas Bolton , his grandmother the great Nelson ' s sister .. ' . Lord Anglesea is not a Paget ; his grandfather ' s name was Bayley . The Duke of Marlborough is not a Churchill , his real name being Spenser ; he bears the Churchill arms and titlebecause his ancestor married the great duke ' s daughter . ,
We have here- —and we might multiply instances till our readers would tire—three great names , Wellington , Marlborough , and Nelson , in . whose blood we have shown a deflection which should make one pause before boasting of high descent , letting pass without mention the accidents of spurious offspring , to which every great house is subjected as well as every poor house . Our last instance shall be of a man of genius ,, or , at any rate , of successful talent , who has won for himself , by his political cleverness , an hereditary title—Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton . Of him , Burke , aided no doubt ( since he claims and solicits original information ) , by the novelist ' s own pen , says , " Sir Bulwer is the third son of William Earle Buhvcr , of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling , Norfolk , Esq ., Brigadier General , by Elizabeth Barbara his wifedaughter , and sole heiress of Richard Warburton
, Lytton , of Knebwbrth Park , Herts . This gentleman was descended / says the authority , in a note , " from Turold , surnarned Bolver , one of the war titles of Odin . The lands of Dalling , conferred upon this Norman by William the Conqueror , are still in possession of his descendant . " Descendant , —how P The blood has twice run out in the male line ; and the name should be either Robinson , or Warburton—nOt one ounce , we should think , of that belonging to the " Lytton who fought at Askalon , " or the gentleman who took one of the war titles of the Saxon god , remaining in the family . Many is the time that we have wondered at the delicate Norman face of Sir Bulwer , as shown in Macliso ' a portrait , and thought of his great nobles , his gentle highwaymen , and his philosophic murderer , Eugene Aram ; but until we saw him . in the flesh , we only awoke from half the dream to find that he had little claim to Norraan bloody
and entre nous , as little to the Norman likeness . The many wars and vicissitudes which this kingdom has undergone , have of course thinned the ranks of thoNonnan peers . Of tho aggregate number of peers , our Hat at the beginning of this article will give some proximate notion . They amount to several hundred . Yet after tho cessation of the Wars of the ttoses , twenty-eight temporal lords only were loft to meet in Parliament ; in Henry VIII . 's time , there were only thirty-six in his first parliament ; on the accession of Queen , Elizabeth only fifty-Bix ; and so on . George III . was a great peer maker , and created upwards of two hundred and nfty British , and two hundred and sixty-eight Irish peers . Looking at tho peerage from these points , we shall conclude witl * tho maxim of Bosola in Webster's « ' Dutohoss of Mally , " that" Glories , like glow-wormm afar off , shine bright , JUut aoen too near , give neither heat nor light /
Tho exorbitant pretensions of some to high birth , and the oxagj gemtcd notions of others in regard to the benefits to bo dorivod therefrom , make buoIi a review of tho truth necessary . A peer , after all , can only be a titled gentleman , and can gain nothing Irom
Jan. 28, 18i)0.J The Leader And Saturday...
Jan . 28 , 18 i ) 0 . J The Leader and Saturday Analyst . 89
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 28, 1860, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_28011860/page/13/
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