374 ACTUAL VALUE OF ENGLISH NOBILITY. 



wish to make her out to be, satisfactory evidence of the offensive and 

 enjoyment- barring manners of the Americans arising from their political 

 institutions. We maintain that the essential connection between repub- 

 licanism and blackguardism, yet remains entirely to be proved ; and 

 further we make bold to set up for the present, till we find ourselves to 

 be wrong, our own impression, in opposition to Mrs. Trollope's, viz. 

 Thai the false personal importance and rude offensiveness of the Americans 

 is conjined to those who have English blood Jhrving in their veins. 



Boasting, as we do, to be radical reformers, and still intending to 

 argue against a close imitation of the American republic as at present 

 constituted, we have felt it necessary to introduce our reasoning in favour 

 of hereditary nobility, by a thorough exposee to our radical friends, of 

 what we feel assured are liberal sentiments towards our transatlantic 

 brethren. We will not flatter our brother radicals : we have no hesita- 

 tion in assuring them, that we think them liable to exaggeration and 

 prejudice in common with other mortals; nor do we believe we could 

 get a hearing from them for a word in favour of nobility, did we not 

 first pacify them by the unequivocal professions of a republican heart. 

 We will not do our readers the injustice to believe, that after such an 

 explanation, as we have given, any one of them could deal so hardly by 

 us, as to throw us aside without a hearing, with a " This fellow has the 

 effrontery to argue in favour of nobility !" " He's a tory in disguise." 



One particular then, in which our national society differs from the 

 American, and in our humble opinion advantageously differs for our 

 purposes, is the provision of titular distinctions, as well hereditary, as 

 during life. We say advantageously, not with reference to present 

 American circumstances ; but, in so far as the American system may 

 be looked to as a model for general government. Unquestionably, it 

 would have been monstrous for the Americans to institute a nobility at 

 the outset of their political independence ; nor do we assert, that the 

 time is come, nor indeed near at hand, when the admission of titles and 

 privileges of honour, not of power, would increase the refinement and 

 happiness of American society, without the slightest danger to the 

 freedom and political importance of the masses of its population. 



But, rejoicing in the existence of American republicanism, as of a 

 treasury of the most serious and practical truths for the instruction of 

 the old countries ; and as capable, in the course of time, of being modi- 

 fied into the most perfect form of government attainable by human 

 contrivance, we cannot for a moment entertain the notion, that its 

 present state is exactly such as should be aimed at by the philosopher 

 and philanthropist, as the ultimatum of civil polity. We do not say 

 this in reference to its elective presidency instead of hereditary mo- 

 narchy ; nor to its elective senate instead of hereditary peerage. We 

 do not think it matters to a nation who is the individual at its head, 

 nor, therefore, whether he be thus elevated by hereditary descent or 

 election for life, or a stated period only, when the nation has esta- 

 blished an adequate circulation of opinion, and possesses legalized means 

 of bringing that opinion to bear with due influence upon measures of 

 government. And the same indifference we feel as to the comparative 

 merits of a senate and hereditary chamber. We have not a word to 

 urge against the American system in these respects. We are not con- 

 vinced that these its provisions are essential to all good government 

 under all circumstances ; neither do we deem them incompatible with 



