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Untitled Article
it completely were no great difficulty ;) it owes them nothing ; nor they it . Mr . Bulvver has ably expounded the effect , upon character and opinions , of the manner in which a man must usually make his way upwards in English society . The possibility of rising is not peculiar . In despotic countries , persons of the lowest rank may be placed at once , by the fiat , of the sovereign , in the highest stations . Not so here . Whether the difference have much moral good in it , may be questioned . The tendency of the process is thus described :
' The highest offices have been open hy law to any man , no matter what his pedigree or his quarterings ; but influences , stronger than laws , have determined that it is only through the aid of one portion or the other of the aristocracy that those offices can be obtained . Hence we see daily in high advancement men sprung from the people , who yet never use the power they acquire in the people ' s behalf . Nay , it may be observed , even among the lawyers , who owe at least the first steps of promotion to their own talents or perseverance , though for the crowning honours they must look to oligarchical favour , that , as in the case of a Scott or a Sugden , the lowest plebeian by birth , has only to be of importance to become the bitterest aristocrat in policy . The road to honours is apparently popular ; but each person rising from the herd has endeavoured to restrain the very principle of popularity by which he has risen . So that , while the power of attaining eminent station has been open to all ranks , yet in proportion as that power bore any individual aloft , you might see it purifying itself of all democratic properties , and beautifully melting itself into that aristocratic atmosphere which it was permitted to attain . Mr . Hunt , whom your excellency may perhaps have heard of , as a Doctrinaire , in a school once familiar to yourself , had a peculiar faculty of uttering hard truths . " You speak , " quoth he , one evening in the House of Commons , " of the mob of demagogues whom the Reform Bill would send to Parliament ; be not afraid , you have one sure method of curing the wildest of them ; choose your man , catch him , place him on the Treasury bench , and be assured you will never hear him accused of being a demagogue again . ' '
* Lord Lachrymal ( it is classical , and dramatic into the bargain , to speak of the living under feigned names ) is a man of plebeian extraction . He has risen through the various grades of the law , and has obtained possession of the highest . No man calls him parvenu—he has confounded himself with the haute noblesse ; if you were to menace the peer ' s right of voting by proxy , he would burst into tears . " Good old man ! " cry the lords , ' how he loves the institutions of his
country 1 " Am I asked why Lord Lachrymal is so much respected by his peers ? am I asked why they boast of his virtues , and think it wrongto remember his origin ? I would answer that question by another , Wliy is the swallow considered by the vulgar a bird that should be sacred from injury ? — Because it builds under their own eaves . There is a certain class of politicians , and Lord Lachrymal is one of
Untitled Article
Characteristics of English Aristocracy . 589
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 589, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/5/
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