11. CHAPTER XI
MORAL EFFECTS OF ARISTOCRACY
The features of aristocratically institution are principally two: privilege,
and an aggravated monopoly of wealth. The first of these is the essence of
aristocracy; the second, that without which aristocracy can rarely be supported.
They are both of them in direct opposition to all sound morality, and all
generous independence of character.
Inequality of wealth is perhaps the necessary result of the institution
of property, in any state of progress at which the human mind has yet arrived;
and cannot, till the character of the human species is essentially altered,
be superseded but by a despotic and positive interference, more injurious
to the common welfare, than the inequality it attempted to remove. Inequality
of wealth involves with it inequality of inheritance.
But the mischief of aristocracy is that it inexpressibly aggravates and
embitters an evil which, in its mildest form, is deeply to be deplored. The
first sentiment of an uncorrupted mind, when it enters upon the theatre of
human life, is, Remove from me and my fellows all arbitrary hindrances; let
us start fair; render all the advantages and honours of social institution
accessible to every man, in proportion to his talents and exertions.
Is it true, as has often been pretended, that generous and exalted qualities
are-hereditary in particular lines of descent? They do not want the alliance
of positive institution to secure to them their proper ascendancy, and enable
them to command the respect of mankind. Is it false? Let it share the fate
of exposure and detection with other impostures. If I conceived of a young
person that he was destined, from his earliest infancy, to be a sublime poet,
or a profound philosopher, should I conceive that the readiest road to the
encouraging and fostering his talents was, from the moment of his birth,
to put a star upon his breast, to salute him with titles of honour, and to
bestow upon him, independently of all exertion, those advantages which exertion
usually proposes to itself as its ultimate object of pursuit? No; I should
send him to the school of man, and oblige him to converse with his fellows
upon terms of equality.
Privilege is a regulation rendering a few men, and those only, by the
accident of their birth, eligible to certain situations. It kills all liberal
ambition in the rest of mankind, by opposing to it an apparently insurmountable
bar. It diminishes it in the favoured class itself, by showing them the principal
qualification as indefeasibly theirs. Privilege entitles a favoured few to
engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left
at large to all her sons; it puts into the hands of these few the means of
oppression against the rest of their species; it fills them with vain-glory,
and affords them every incitement to insolence and a lofty disregard to the
feelings and interests of others.
Privilege, as we have already said, is the essence of aristocracy; and,
in a rare condition of human society, such as that of the ancient Romans,
privilege has been able to maintain itself without the accession of wealth,
and to flourish in illustrious poverty. But this can be the case only under
a very singular coincidence of circumstances. In general, an aggravated monopoly
of wealth has been one of the objects about which the abettors of aristocracy
have been most incessantly solicitous. Hence the origin of entails, rendering
property. in its own nature too averse to a generous circulation, a thousand
times more stagnant and putrescent than before, of primogeniture, which disinherits
every other member of a family, to heap unwholesome abundance upon one; and
of various limitations, filling the courts of civilized Europe with endless
litigation, and making it in many cases impossible to decide who it is that
has the right of conveying a property, and what shall amount to a legal transfer.
There is one thing, more than all the rest, of importance to the well
being of mankind, justice. A neglect of justice is not only to be deplored
for the direct evil it produces; it is perhaps still more injurious by its
effects in perverting the understanding, overturning our calculations of
the future, and thus striking at the root of moral discernment, and genuine
power and decision of character.
Of all the principles of justice, there is none so material to the moral
rectitude of mankind as that no man can be distinguished but by his personal
merit. When a man has proved himself a benefactor to the public, when he
has already, by laudable perseverance, cultivated in himself talents which
need only encouragement and public favour to bring them to maturity, let
that man be honoured. In a state of society where fictitious distinctions
are unknown, it is impossible he should not be honoured. But that a man should
be looked up to with servility and awe because the king has bestowed on him
a spurious name, or decorated him with a ribband; that another should revel
in luxury because his ancestor three centuries ago bled in the quarrel of
Lancaster or York; do we imagine that these iniquities can be practiced without
injury?
Let those who entertain this opinion converse a little with the lower
orders of mankind. They will perceive that the unfortunate wretch who, with
unremitted labour, finds himself incapable adequately to feed and clothe
his family has a sense of injustice rankling at his heart.
But let us suppose that their sense of injustice were less acute than
is here supposed, what favourable inference can be deduced from that? Is
not the injustice real? If the minds of men are so withered and stupified
by the constancy with which it is practiced that they do not feel the rigour
that grinds them into nothing, how does that improve the picture?
Let us fairly consider, for a moment, what is the amount of injustice
included in the institution of aristocracy. I am born, suppose, a Polish
prince with an income of £300,000 per annum. You are born a manerial
serf, or a Creolian Negro, attached to the soil, and transferable, by barter
or otherwise, to twenty successive lords. In vain shall be your most generous
efforts, and your unwearied industry, to free yourself from the intolerable
yoke. Doomed, by the law of your birth, to wait at the gates of the palace
you must never enter; to sleep under a ruined, weather-beaten roof, while
your master sleeps under canopies of state; to feed on putrefied offals,
while the world is ransacked for delicacies for his table; to labour, without
moderation or limit, under a parching sun, while he basks in perpetual sloth;
and to be rewarded at last with contempt, reprimand, stripes and mutilation.
In fact the case is worse than this. I could endure all that injustice or
caprice could inflict provided I possessed, in the resource of a firm mind,
the power of looking down with pity on my tyrant, and of knowing that I had
that within that sacred character of truth, virtue and fortitude which all
his injustice could not reach. But a slave and a serf are condemned to stupidity
and vice, as well as to calamity.
Is all this nothing? Is all this necessary for the maintenance of civil
order? Let it be recollected that, for this distinction, there is not the
smallest foundation in the nature of things, that, as we have already said,
there is no particular mould for the construction of lords, and that they
are born neither better nor worse than the poorest of their dependents. It
is this structure of aristocracy, in all its sanctuaries and fragments, against
which reason and morality have declared war. It is alike unjust, whether
we consider it in the calls of India; the villainage of the feudal system;
or the despotism of ancient Rome, where the debtors were dragged into personal
servitude, to expiate, by stripes and slavery, the usurious loans they could
not repay. Mankind will never be, in an eminent degree, virtuous and happy,
till each man shall possess that portion of distinction and no more, to which
he is entitled by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is
equally the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be
delivered from the listlessness of tyranny, and the other from the brutalizing
operation of servitude. How long shall we be told in vain 'that mediocrity
of fortune is the true rampart of personal happiness?