the suffrage with the effrontery which in all times has distinguished the demagogue. Well might Wilberforce say, 'Let us never hope to win the democrats; they have ideal grievances and ideal advantages; they cry for liberty, but what they want is power.' The party in France who are the advocates of constitutional government look with eager and envious eyes to England as the proudest example of it that the world has yet seen. They have of late years more than ever observed it with attention, and commented upon it with intelligence. In their own country they have undergone both the evils of republicanism and the evils of despotism, and this has not only given them an ardent longing for the happy medium we enjoy, but a much more acute perception than commonly prevails in England of dangers which they themselves have experienced, and which seem less to us because we have hitherto escaped them. They are, therefore, of no light authority upon this question, and few among them deserve to be heard with greater attention than M. Montalembert,* who, from the circumstances of his birth, has a more intimate acquaintance with the people, language, and institutions of this country, than can often be possessed by a foreigner. He has pronounced beforehand on the scheme of Mr. Bright, and, though his words will be lost upon democrats, they will carry weight with thoughtful men. 'The small number,' he says, 'of electoral boroughs may still be reduced; but it will not be so without giving a proportionate equivalent to the agricultural representation; and as long as this proportion is preserved, nothing will have been fundamentally changed or shaken: but this would be different if the democracy should succeed in altering the present proportion by taking population for the only basis, and in conferring a preponderance of representation on the unsettled, over-excitable, and demoralised inhabitants of the towns; or, still worse, in assuming as the exclusive foundation of the national representation the delusions and extravagances of universal suffrage. Then, indeed, there would be a sure and early end of the Parliament and of the existing England. But let us hope that for this we have long to wait.' Nobody doubts that such unsettled and over-excitable' voters as M. Montalembert has described are fit instruments for a man whose avowed object is to overthrow the House of Lords and the Church. His means are in keeping with his ultimate aims, and all who do not desire to see the end of the existing England will resist, unless they are afflicted with an intellectual infatuation, every attempt of Mr. Bright to put the entire country into subjection to the inflammable masses of the towns. The amount of their *The Political Future of England, 1856,' p. 129. self-control self-control has been shown again and again in the formidable riots which have arisen in times of political excitement and commercial distress. The wild outbreaks produced by want may be regarded with a lenient eye; but a mob liable to such convulsions is not the body to which to intrust the keeping of the welfare of England. Mr. Bright asserts that he is willing to allow the House of Lords to remain, but his language betrays that he only grants them a respite till democracy has made a little further advance. The agitator who desires to pull down the aristocracy that he and his party may take their place and usurp their power will never be turned aside from his ambition and self-confidence. Men of this class attack whatever is above themselves, and by this symptom alone their true animus may be known. But there are others who, without any selfish and sinister end, overlook, from want of observation and reflection, the vast importance of an aristocratic element to the social fabric. Here again the enlightened portion of French politicians can testify how great is the blessing and how terrible the loss. M. de Tocqueville, one of the calmest and most philosophical of all the persons who have ever written upon the constitutions of empires, describes in his wise book on the French Revolution the consequences of the extinction of the order of nobility-describes it not from theoretical speculation, but from sad experience of the actual effects. He says that men in the countries which have suffered this calamity, being no longer connected together by any ties of caste, of class, of corporation, of family, are but too easily inclined to think of nothing but their private interests, and to sink into the narrow precincts of self in which all public virtue is extinguished. In such societies,' he goes on, 'every man is incessantly stimulated by the fear of falling and by eagerness to rise; and as money, which has become the principal mark that distinguishes one man from another, passes incessantly from hand to hand, and transforms the condition of families, there is scarcely any one who is not compelled to make desperate efforts to retain or to acquire it. The desire to be rich at any cost and the pursuit of material pleasure are, therefore, in such communities the prevalent passions. They are easily diffused through all classes, and penetrate even to those who had hitherto been most free from them, and would soon enervate and degrade them all if nothing checked their influence.'* This, we repeat, is a picture drawn from the life and not from imagination. As the shopkeeping and mercenary influence would predominate when the aristocratic influence was destroyed, so a shopkeeping spirit would overspread the land. As a general rule, men are compelled to respect them * France before the Revolution: Preliminary Notice, p. 20. selves in proportion as they are respected by others. From their titles and long descent a halo of dignity has gathered round our aristocracy which nothing could replace. Even the newly-created peer shares in it because the importance which belongs to the body. at large is immediately extended to him. The result of the deference shown to our nobles is that in the majority of instances they endeavour to deserve it. The tribute paid to their position they return by the exercise of the graces and many of the virtues of life. Because they are noblemen in rank they are noble in their conduct, and for the most part set an example of generosity, goodbreeding, and freedom from selfishness which leavens those around. them and raises the entire fabric of society to a higher level. Theirs is an inherited chivalry of feeling, which the father learnt from the grandfather and teaches to the son. The proud retrospect of the past, and the desire to transmit their honours unimpaired to the future, combine with the motives which surround them in the present to keep them true to their lofty standard. There are exceptions, and always will be, for nothing can extinguish the lower passions of human nature in the entire mass of any set of men. There must be good and bad, competent and incompetent, in all classes, as in all professions. But the general tendency of an order of nobility is to produce a higher state of feeling and a more liberal disposition than would otherwise exist. The grovelling passion for lucre, the principle of every one for himself, will be sorry substitutes for the graces and charities of life, for the social benevolence and magnanimity which are the consequence of inherited honour and exalted position when erected on the basis of constitutional freedom. Yet this is only a part of the benefit which we derive from a peerage. It is the ballast which gives stability to the vessel. The great houses and estates scattered through England are so many centres to the surrounding districts, and assist in maintaining contentment and order. The personal respect which is entertained for the proprietor, the services he renders, the protection he affords, moderate in the masses the craving for change. The bond of good fellowship unites the various classes, and they move on together in a regulated harmony, instead of each man striving to break loose from his sphere. If dignities were abolished, this description of influence would undoubtedly be diminished. Estates would change hands more frequently than at present; the new proprietors, even if they copied the conduct of the old-which in the altered state of the country would not be the case-could not command the same respect. Every one acquainted with the agricultural. population is aware with what dislike they regard the novus homo, and how strong is their attachment to ancient families. The The real security for order is, on this very account, in the rural districts. The gentry combine with the aristocracy to maintain it; and as every democratic scheme avowedly aims at diminishing the power of the first even when it professes to spare the second, there would both be a loosening of the present cohesion, and the counterpoise to revolutionary projects would be gone. The overthrow of the Established Church, which is an invariable concomitant of the scheme for getting rid of the nobility, would enormously aggravate the political and social evil. The rural parishes would pass into the hands of religionists little removed above the labourers themselves, upon whose scanty contributions they must depend for a subsistence. The respect which is now paid to position, to intelligence, to knowledge, to pecuniary assistance, must cease with the things themselves. Instead of the standard of pure faith which is kept unceasingly before the eyes of the people in our liturgy, and is day by day enforced by our clergy, they would fall a prey to the extravagances of rival preachers, each outbidding the other for their favour. Many Dissenters have admitted that nothing except the checks placed by the pervading influence of the church upon fanaticism, and by its toleration upon theological animosities, preserves the numerous sects beyond its pale from tearing one another to pieces. This is more than a supposition,-it is an historical fact. Every one read in the religious history of the Commonwealth knows what fierce dissensions, what blasphemies and follies, what violations of every notion of decency and solemnity, were rife throughout the land the moment the formularies of our faith were exchanged for the fancies of individual ministers, notwithstanding that the establishment itself was retained. The darkness, the ignorance, the delusions which would ensue in the course of a generation, if the clergy were swept away, would completely revolutionise the state as well as the church, and a species of chaos would reign supreme throughout the land unless tyranny stepped in to restrain the licence of miscalled liberty. M. de Tocqueville, fortified by personal experience of the governments both of America and France, maintains that the communities which will be least able permanently to escape from absolute government are precisely the communities in which aristocracy has ceased to exist, and can never exist again.' Anarchy grows out of the destruction of aristocracy; despotism out of anarchy. Men require then to be protected from themselves and from each other, and, unable to restore the gentle restraints which grew from institutions and opinions, they are compelled to submit to the restraints imposed by the power of the sword. Nevertheless, this despotism exasperates many of the vices by which it was occasioned. occasioned. If, says M. de Tocqueville, the ties of caste and family are broken when an aristocracy is thrown down, despotism deprives men still more of mutual dependence and of occasions for acting together. Already tending to separation, despotism isolates them they were already chilled in their regard for others; despotism reduces them to ice.' So again he says that despotism increases cupidity. The mind, no longer occupied with public affairs and with noble aims, seeks private gains with redoubled greediness. The path of high aspirations is blocked up, and grovelling passions take their place. Such are some of the services which an order of nobility renders in its social capacity, and some of the evils which would accrue from its destruction. Its services as a branch of the Legislature are still more signal, and since the passing of the Reform Bill have become more than ever indispensable. A House of Peers is needed to check popular delusions, of which our history affords numerous examples, until the public have had time to recover their senses. It is needed to protect the country from the tyranny of the Commons on questions in which the members oppose the understood wishes and interests of the community. It is needed to check the too hasty enactment of crude and immature projects, and to prevent any measure from being passed until it has been thoroughly considered. It is needed to supply the deficiencies, remove the contradictions, and correct the blunders of the bills which come up from the Lower House; and it is needed to obtain the services of those high functionaries whom it would be unseemly to expose to the turbulence of an election, as well as for those venerable men who could not be expected to solicit the suffrages of large constituencies, or to mingle in the turmoil of a popular assembly. These persons, by their great abilities, by their long experience, by the authority and veneration which attach to them, are among the most efficient servants of the public, and their place would be ill supplied by a fresh influx of bankrupt shopkeepers, low attorneys, briefless barristers, and small manufacturers into what, if Mr. Bright had his will, would then be the only legislative body. Even before the Reform Bill the Lords were essential for the causes we have enumerated. Though there was a certain number of their own nominees in the Commons who assisted to keep up harmony between the Houses, though there were far fewer changes proposed, and the Conservative element was vastly stronger than at present, the Peers sometimes exercised with undeniable advantage their controlling power. Without any check of the kind at present, and still more when the majority of the members of the Legislature were the representatives of the multitude, the mischief and confusion |