238 THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY. 



popular excitement of the day against aristocratic men and measures. 

 Deliberately attached to the reform party, and bent upon radical reform, 

 wherever we think radical reform necessary, it does not follow, that we 

 should be bitter haters of any set of our fellow-countrymen. We do 

 not set ourselves to the task of preaching forbearance and moderation 

 to the hostile parties, not because we do not love forbearance and 

 moderation, but because we think the crisis has arrived when it would 

 be as impossible to rectify our political errors without force and angry 

 contention, as it would be to purge the natural atmosphere without the 

 violent and partially destructive collision of its antagonistic elements. 

 But we feel assured that reflecting readers will recognise a spirit of 

 humanity in our mode of advocating the popular cause ; that they will 

 give us credit for aiming at the suaviter in modo, though the serious im- 

 portance of the interests at stake oblige us to maintain the fortiter in re. 

 For what is the chief feature in our view of the question at issue between 

 the hostile parties? Is it not, that in great measure neither is to 

 blame ; the one being fortified in maintaining error by the powerful in- 

 fluence of custom and prescription, and factitious right j the other 

 impelled to the acquisition of truth by the irrepressible energies of our 

 natural constitution. We have, in fact, by referring the altered relation 

 of the few to the many to an acknowledged law of natural truth, taken 

 the .contest, in some degree, out of the hands of the belligerents. The 

 legitimate inference from our argument is, that neither party should 

 resort to extreme measures of hostility, since the one, strive as it will, 

 cannot maintain its position ; while the other, if it only keep up a good 

 look out, and unity amongst its members, must, at no very distant 

 period, possess itself of all the advantages it could gain by the most 

 offensive system of warfare. 



We are very far, indeed, from a feeling of exultation over lords, 

 because we know the importance of mere lordliness to be going, going, 

 going, and that, if they do not take care, it will, ere many years have 

 elapsed, be altogether gone. We speak the truth sincerely when we 

 say, we wish we could save our noble brethren the mortification of this 

 decline and fall, at an expense less serious to the community, including 

 lords themselves, than must attend the maintenance of their empire in 

 unimpaired splendour and exaltation.- But we dare not swerve from 

 our allegiance to a wise and beneficent providence, so as to move even a 

 finger in support of that, which we feel convinced is destined to decline^ 

 if not utter extinction, ere the final stage of this world's moral progres- 

 sion, shall have been reached. Were it not for this paramount conviction, 

 having no personal pique with nobles, having never been ill-treated by 

 one of the order, but, on the contrary, well making all allowances for 

 the moral disadvantage under which, through circumstances, noblemen 

 labour, our charity, we think, is almost great enough to wish that lords 

 might be indulged in their own estimate of their inherent superiority, 

 and the possession, to boot, of all the privileges of power and profit 

 hitherto allowed them. 



It is not because we love lords, as lords, the less, but because we love 

 them as men the more, that we cannot forbear from feeling ourselves, 

 and trying to make others feel so too, how baseless, how ruinous, how 

 rapidly hastening to destined decay is the old fabric of nobility ! We 

 know that lords must continue to think more highly of themselves than 

 they ought to think, if lordly consequence be kept up at its present 



