VII.: Sources of Aristocratic Monopoly.

The magnitude of the territorial revenues of the Aristocracy is not such as to be in extreme disproportion with the incomes of many others in a community of great commercial opulence, and forms not any portion of the vice of their institution. Whether some noble lords have augmented their rental out of the spoils of the Church and the Crown is a question merely of historical curiosity, and can never be of any practical utility: it is occasionally adverted to as a set-off to oligarchical pride and pretension; beyond which it has no available application. By the law of England, the quiet possession of an estate for sixty years gives a clear and valid title; and we believe there are few noblemen who cannot adduce legal proof of the undisturbed enjoyment of their parks and mansions for a much longer period. So far, then, as the acres are concerned they are perfectly safe; whatever political changes may intervene—and great ones are impending—the legitimate incomes of the peerage can never be endangered, unless they blindly and pertinaciously oppose a regeneration which the wants of the age render indispensable; unless they emulate, in fatuity and crime, Charles Capet and his guilty accomplices.

Aristocratic monopoly and abuse do not result from enormous landed revenues, but from hereditary rights of legislation, from primogeniture and entail-laws, and from nomination boroughs. None of these, however, are essential constituents of an upper chamber; only two-thirds of the nobility are entitled, by birth, to seats in parliament; primogeniture and entails are feudal barbarisms void of utility in modern society; and the usurpation of the franchises of the people is such a manifest subversion of constitutional immunities, so inimical to the general freedom and prosperity, that it cannot be defended on any pretext of justice or expediency. Abolish these corruptions, and all things will work together for good, without spoliation, without civil convulsion; and the Devonshires, the Lansdownes, and Northumberlands enjoy, undisturbed, their wide-spread domains, and retain, without murmur or complaint, their social distinction and supremacy.

The great fount of evil has been the decayed boroughs; these have been the Pandora’s box, from which have flowed national calamities, desolating wars, lavish expenditure, and the monstrous debt and dead weight. They have been the obstacles to every social melioration—civil, commercial, legal, and ecclesiastical. By means of them, the nobility have been enabled to double their private revenues, appropriating to themselves the dignities and livings of the church; pensions and grants out of the public purse; and filling, with their connexions and dependants, every lucrative office in the army, navy, and public administration. There are only two descriptions of offices, namely, those requiring talent and industry, the duties of which cannot be discharged by deputy, that the boroughmongers have denied themselves. Unfit for the higher stations in courts of law, they have condescended to fill the profitable situations of clerk, registrar, messenger, usher, or receiver, and carry bags and wands in the trains of those whose ability alone made them their superiors, and to whom they were compelled to pay this homage as a penalty for their own indolence and cupidity.

In consequence of the boroughs, all our institutions are partial, oppressive, and aristocratic. We have an aristocratic church, aristocratic bar, aristocratic taxation, aristocratic corn-laws, aristocratic laws of property, and, till recently, aristocratic game-laws; in short, the aristocratic spirit pervades every thing—all is privilege, prescription, monopoly, association, and corporation. But why, it may be asked, has it so long continued,—why did not a wealthy, spirited, and enlightened community exert itself long before to abate the general oppression? The chief reason was this—we had also an aristocratic press! By this little key-stone was the entire Gothic arch of antiquated abuse and imposture upheld.

How has it happened the Aristocracy have been so extremely sulky in regard to the memorable events of July 1830; that they have kept their purse-strings so tight; that they kept aloof from all participation in the general exultation? Did they consider, as Napoleon did, that “a revolution in France is a revolution in Europe?” This second national uprising, however, was attended with no popular massacre, no confiscation, no obtrusion of infidelity; all was brave, wise, and moderate—merely a great community rising, with one accord, to defeat an insane attempt to subject it to the yoke of despotism and superstition. Yet they sent forth no carmen triumphale on the sublime occasion. Is it possible that they contemplated, at a distance, the mighty swell which was to submerge their own proud pretensions? If it were so, does it not show that their interests are personal; that they are not in common with the people; that they are merely a corporation in the state, and that they feel their corporate immunities imperilled? But what is it which renders them insulated monopolists—strangers in the land? It is not the magnitude of their estates, for they are not objects of popular concern. No; it is not what they rightfully possess, but what they have surreptitiously obtained—the franchises of the people, and the money of the people, which make them fastidious and apprehensive. Be just and fear not, is our advice, and they are still safe!