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THE ANCIEN REGIME
THE ANCIEN REGIME CHARLES KINGSLEY But more. It was impossible for me in these Lectures to bring
forward as fully as I could have wished the contrast between the
continental nations and England whether now or during the
eighteenth century. But that contrast cannot be too carefully
studied at the present moment. In proportion as it is seen and
understood will the fear of revolution (if such exists) die out
among the wealthier classes; and the wish for it (if such exists)
among the poorer; and a large extension of the suffrage will be
looked on as--what it actually is--a safe and harmless concession to
the wishes--and as I hold to the just rights--of large portion of
the British nation.
There exists in Britain now as far as I can see no one of those
evils which brought about the French Revolution. There is no
widespread misery and therefore no widespread discontent among the
classes who live by hand-labour. The legislation of the last
generation has been steadily in favour of the poor as against the
rich; and it is even more true now than it was in 1789 that--as
Arthur Young told the French mob which stopped his carriage--the
rich pay many taxes (over and above the poor-rates a direct tax on
the capitalist in favour of the labourer) more than are paid by the
poor. "In England" (says M. de Tocqueville of even the eighteenth
century) "the poor man enjoyed the privilege of exemption from
taxation; in France the rich." Equality before the law is as well-
nigh complete as it can be where some are rich and others poor; and
the only privileged class it sometimes seems to me is the pauper
who has neither the responsibility of self-government nor the toil
of self-support.
A minority of malcontents some justly some unjustly angry with
the present state of things will always exist in this world. But a
majority of malcontents we shall never have as long as the workmen
are allowed to keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of free
speech free public meeting free combination for all purposes which
do not provoke a breach of the peace. There may be (and probably
are) to be found in London and the large towns some of those
revolutionary propagandists who have terrified and tormented
continental statesmen since the year 1815. But they are far fewer
in number than in 1848; far fewer still (I believe) than in 1831;
and their habits notions temper whole mental organisation is so
utterly alien to that of the average Englishman that it is only the
sense of wrong which can make him take counsel with them or make
common cause with them. Meanwhile every man who is admitted to a
vote is one more person withdrawn from the temptation to
disloyalty and enlisted in maintaining the powers that be--when
they are in the wrong as well as when they are in the right. For
every Englishman is by his nature conservative; slow to form an
opinion; cautious in putting it into effect; patient under evils
which seem irremediable; persevering in abolishing such as seem
remediable; and then only too ready to acquiesce in the earliest
practical result; to "rest and be thankful." His faults as well as
his virtues make him anti-revolutionary. He is generally too dull
to take in a great idea; and if he does take it in often too
selfish to apply it to any interest save his own. But now and then
when the sense of actual injury forces upon him a great idea like
that of Free-trade or of Parliamentary Reform he is indomitable
however slow and patient in translating his thought into fact: and
they will not be wise statesmen who resist his dogged determination.
If at this moment he demands an extension of the suffrage eagerly
and even violently the wise statesman will give at once gracefully
and generously what the Englishman will certainly obtain one day
if he has set his mind upon it. If on the other hand he asks for
it calmly then the wise statesman (instead of mistaking English
reticence for apathy) will listen to his wishes all the more
readily; seeing in the moderation of the demand the best possible
guarantee for moderation in the use of the thing demanded.
And be it always remembered that in introducing these men into the
"balance of the Constitution" we introduce no unknown quantity.
Statesmen ought to know them if they know themselves; to judge what
the working man would do by what they do themselves. He who imputes
virtues to his own class imputes them also to the labouring class.
He who imputes vices to the labouring class imputes them to his own
class. For both are not only of the same flesh and blood but what
is infinitely more important of the same spirit; of the same race;
in innumerable cases of the same ancestors. For centuries past the
most able of these men have been working upwards into the middle
class and through it often to the highest dignities and the
highest family connections; and the whole nation knows how they have
comported themselves therein. And by a reverse process (of which
the physiognomist and genealogist can give abundant proof) the
weaker members of that class which was dominant during the Middle
Age have been sinking downward often to the rank of mere day-
labourers and carrying downward with them--sometimes in a very
tragical and pathetic fashion--somewhat of the dignity and the
refinement which they had learnt from their ancestors.
Thus has the English nation (and as far as I can see the Scotch
likewise) become more homogeneous than any nation of the Continent
if we except France since the extermination of the Frankish
nobility. And for that very reason as it seems to me it is more
fitted than any other European nation for the exercise of equal
political rights; and not to be debarred of them by arguments drawn
from countries which have been governed--as England has not been--by
a caste.
The civilisation not of mere book-learning but of the heart; all
that was once meant by "manners"--good breeding high feeling
respect for self and respect for others--are just as common (as far
as I have seen) among the hand-workers of England and Scotland as
among any other class; the only difference is that these qualities
develop more early in the richer classes owing to that severe
discipline of our public schools which makes mere lads often fit to
govern because they have learnt to obey: while they develop later-
-generally not till middle age--in the classes who have not gone
through in their youth that Spartan training and who indeed (from a
mistaken conception of liberty) would not endure it for a day. This
and other social drawbacks which are but too patent retard the
manhood of the working classes. That it should be so is a wrong.
For if a citizen have one right above all others to demand anything
of his country it is that he should be educated; that whatever
capabilities he may have in him however small should have their
fair and full chance of development. But the cause of the wrong is
not the existence of a caste or a privileged class or of anything
save the plain fact that some men will be always able to pay more
for their children's education than others; and that those children
will inevitably win in the struggle of life.
Meanwhile in this fact is to be found the most weighty if not the
only argument against manhood suffrage which would admit many--but
too many alas!--who are still mere boys in mind. To a reasonable
household suffrage it cannot apply. The man who (being almost
certainly married and having children) can afford to rent a 5 pound
tenement in a town or in the country either has seen quite enough
of life and learnt quite enough of it to form a very fair judgment
of the man who offers to represent him in Parliament; because he has
learnt not merely something of his own interest or that of his
class but--what is infinitely more 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 exist. In each succeeding century it
is applied to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale" (as
the "bagman" of Pickwick has become and has deserved to become the
"commercial gentleman" of our day). "At length it travelled with
the English to America where it is used to designate every citizen
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