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Untitled Article
them , who build their fortunes in the roofs of the aristocracy , and obtain , by about an equal merit , an equal sanctity with the swallow . ' In nearly all states , it is by being the tool of the great that the lowly rise . People point to the new Sejanus , and cry to their children , See the effect of merit I" Alas ! it is the effect of servility .
In despotic states , the plebeian has even a greater chance of rising than in free . In the East , a common water-carrier to-day is grand vizier to-morrow . In the Roman republic the low-born were less frequently exalted , than they were in the Roman despotism . So with us—it was the Tories who brought forward the man of low or Tnediocre birth ; the Whigs , when they came into power , had only their grands seigneurs to put into office . The olcf maxim of the political
adventurer was invariably this : To rise from the people , take every opportunity to abuse them . What mattered it , then , to the plebeians that one of their number was exalted to the cabinet ? He had risen by opposing their wishes ; his very characteristic was that of contempt for his brethren . A nobleman ' s valet is always super-eminently bitter against the canaille ; a plebeian in high station is usually valet to the whole peerage . '—vol . i . p . 17—21 .
The example of Canning would here have been to the point . His history and fate ought never to be forgotten . Talent and aristocracy were his good and evil genii . The natural impulses of superior intellect impelled him in the right direction ; those of the influence by which he hoped to rise drove him more powerfully in the wrong . But the warfare must often have waxed hot within him . Several times in his life the balance vibrated . He spurned at the dirty work which he was expected to do , for it became too dirty for his endurance . Yet the prospect of a life of
Opposition , of patriotism unpaid , unhonoured , unrising , was too much for his public virtue . Again and again he stooped to
conquer . Reversing the ordinary course of things , as his power became greater his principles appeared purer . The real man was more visible . The corruption had been more over him than in him . By a conjuncture which rallied around him many of his former opponents , he was borne upwards towards the summit
of his ambition . He was gazetted the premier of Great Britain ; the country was in the confident expectation of a more liberal government than it had long known ; when he fell under the envenomed daggers of an aristocracy , which was willing to hire his brilliant talent for a tool , but would not endure its mastery . Not unheedfully has his great rival conned the moral of his fate .
Their occasional need of popular aid for electioneering and other political purposes , and the comparative or absolute poverty which makes them not unwilling to receive the fortune together with the daughter of a commoner in marriage , have blended the titulary patricians and plebeians of England , to a degree unexampled in the history of caste . This fusion has proved more mischievous than would the broadest line of demarcation . It has
Untitled Article
690 Characteristics of English Aristocracy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 590, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/6/
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