64$ On the Natural Depreciation of English Nobility. [JUNE, 



No objection can then lie against the Reform Bill, on the score of 

 its lowering* the dignity of nobles. The natural course of civilization has 

 already sunk the dignity of nobles far below the point of depreciation 

 reached by the provisions of the Bill. The dignity of the House of 

 Lords cannot by human means be saved from still further depreciation, 

 as popular intelligence and attainments advance j and all this, not because 

 the people grudge the superiority which nobles claim, for they have 

 always been too prone to admit it, but because lordly dignity, having no 

 existence in the nature of things, depends entirely on the opinion of 

 society. The Reform Bill does not propose to strip, nor can it strip, 

 nobles of the natural influence of wealth in conjunction with, or indeed 

 without, virtue or talents; but it aims at disabusing nobles of the notion, 

 that they possess any importance beyond what the rest of the community 

 is in a condition to recognize. The Reform Bill only aims, in fact, at 

 making the names peer, and nobleman, and lord, more appropriate in 

 their signification than they are at present; more correct exponents of 

 the political value of the persons whom they represent. Had not the 

 country been deeply impressed with a sense of the natural depreciation 

 of nobility, the Reform Bill would have seemed as monstrous to the 

 country as it now does to the Lords; and thus the reception the Bill 

 has met with from the country is an irrefragable proof that it was 

 wanted; that Lord Grey had good reason to believe in the depreciated 

 public estimation of his order; good reason to believe that its pretensions 

 to power and control were no longer acquiesced in by the nation ; good 

 reason to believe that if these pretensions were longer maintained, they 

 must generate animosity too fierce to be appeased by less than the entire 

 humiliation of the pretenders. 



We repel, as a scandalous libel upon ourselves and brother radicals, 

 the imputation of tory lords and their minions, that our clamour for 

 reform is prompted by a desire to subvert the order of society. We 

 know the sentiments of the lower classes, better than do these slanderers. 

 We bless ourselves that our lot has not been cast amongst those showy 

 and absorbing vanities, which engross the nobleman, and shut him out 

 from acquaintance as well as sympathy with the mass of his fellow 

 countrymen. We, from our own knowledge of the people, can vouch for 

 the fact, that, of the multitude of radical reformers, the ruffians who 

 desire to rob the wealthy or degrade the honoured, merely because they 

 are wealthy and honoured, are in numbers too contemptible to have the 

 power of deranging the grades and institutions of society. We assert, 

 that the almost universal sentiment of radical reform is a sentiment, 

 not merely of just, but of generous, aye generous consideration, for the 

 real rights and justifiable feelings of the upper classes. We affirm, it 

 can be only hatred or ignorance of the people of England, which would 

 deny the fact, that they are not merely willing, but anxious, while they 

 vindicate themselves from oppression and misery, to award to their 

 oppressors even more profit and honour than they have any right to 

 expect from a community, intelligent and able to act without their assist- 

 ance, as the English people have long since become. Knowing this to 

 be truth, we likewise know, that if an impression to the disparagement 

 of our nobles pervades the mass of our countrymen, it is impossible to 

 attribute this impression to the influence of faction in the innate turbu- 

 lence of the people. We know, therefore, that this impression has been 



