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REASONS WHY THE ASPECT OF SOCIETY IN ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES MUST BE RADICALLY AND PERMANENTLY DIFFERENT.

We must unavoidably form an incorrect judgment upon the general aspect of English and American society, unless we know the reasons which cause a difference in their respective customs, habits, and manners. A transient observer, no matter how great his genius, how classic his pen, how brilliant his imagination, hastening through a foreign country, with no standard on his mind but that of his own nation, lays hold of things at random, as they are presented to his view, and without any clear conception of their fitness, and without tracing the effect to the cause, is apt to condemn and ridicule what he does not comprehend. I shall endeavor to place the subject in such a clear point of view, that every Englishman may feel that he is right in believing, that there is no government in the world so wisely adapted to promote his interests and secure his happiness as his own; and every American that there is no government so well calculated to guard his liberty, secure his rights, and consolidate his happiness as the one of his choice; and that consequently the manners, habits, and customs of each are just such as naturally flow from the respective systems of government, and although diverging in contrary directions from a common centre, show, nevertheless, an equal justness and fitness. There is no solid ground for condemnation, still less for ridicule; and, therefore, he who sets himself up as judge and arbiter, and shapes his decrees by the exclusive standard of his own country, places himself in a false position, and deserves the humiliation of seeing his judgment overruled. These two fundamental principles being settled, all the differences of national character will be recognized as exactly appropriate to the system to which they belong, and cannot be removed or taken down without destroying the frame-work of society and dissolving its elementary principles. If we consider, in the first place, the

general state of society in England, and then advert to that of our own country, perhaps we shall best compass the end at which we aim, illustrate our views by facts and the light of contrast, and bring out the characteristic features of both.

In England the feudal system, that tremendous military power, which, with a rod of iron, reduced the British nation to a vast army, and held the population in the most inexorable bondage, is abolished. But the spirit of that system in all its most essential proportions as they bear upon modern society, still remains in full vigor. Indeed, the various classes of the community are more distinctly marked off, and each assigned to its specific rank, now, than they were under the feudal system itself.

In those remote ages the mass of the people of England were absolute slaves captured in war, sold as bondsmen, incapable of holding any property, subject to the entire control of the barons in peace or war, and transferable with the soil, precisely in the same manner that Africans, or any other slaves, are at the present day. But interesting as this subject is, and bearing directly upon the point in hand, it is not my intention to trace it through its successive meliorations, from its introduction into England by William the Conqueror to its final abrogation at Runnymede. A reference to it only, as constituting the basis on which the whole structure of English society rests, and as affording a clue for the development of many traits of character and habits of life which would otherwise appear to an American singularly absurd and incongruous, will be sufficient. our attention may well be directed to the consideration of the spirit of the feudal system, entwining itself around every branch of society, and holding in one compact body the component parts of a mighty nation.

But

The hereditary claims of birth, the

deference paid by every subject to his superior in rank, and the promptitude with which he takes and occupies his appropriate station in the general system, all flow from the spirit of feudalism, and are perfectly agreeable to the mind, and congenial with the feelings of an Englishman. It will be perceived that rank is not confined to the nobility. Every individual in the empire holds rank-is a peer in his own circle-and just as tenacious to maintain it as if he sat upon the throne.

The crown, as head of the monarchy, and conservator of the Church, the centre of power, the source of emolument, and the arbiter of honorable distinction, necessarily claims the first and only rank without a peer. To be alienated from the crown is to be an outlaw. In the eyes of an Englishman, everything that is great and glorious, and venerable, clusters around the name of majesty.

The hereditary nobility of the country, the great landed proprietors of the kingdom, sharing in the administration of government, and consequently the most prominent defenders of the throne, stand next in rank.

The legal profession, whence recruits are most usually drawn to strengthen and invigorate the power of the nobility, and to supply the defects of time and imbecility, may be considered, in conjunction with the Church establishment, as holding the third rank in the state.

The army, navy, and literary classes the fourth.

The merchants and bankers the fifth. The manufacturers the sixth. The warehousemen and wholesale dealers the seventh.

The shopkeepers, retail dealers, and brokers the eighth.

The mechanics and master tradesmen the ninth.

The laborers, (agricultural, manufacturing, and all other descriptions,) the tenth.

These are the general divisions of English society, with shades of difference and occasional intermingling of contiguous classes, as they exist at the present time in Great Britain, and, with some local distinctions, over the face of Europe.

All these distinctive grades of society, walled off, the one from the other, by common consent, are recognized in

daily intercourse, and are more fully and more mechanically organized than they were when the feudal system bore its intolerably oppressive hand upon the population of the country. Those accustomed to this aristocratical state of society feel it neither grievous nor degrading to yield submission to those above, seeing they receive the same homage from all below them.

Having pointed out this general classification as nearly as practicable without pretending to perfect accuracy, but sufficiently near for our purpose, we may direct our attention to its consequences.

It is true, no class is confined to its appropriate orbit by any physical force, but there is a moral influence, ten thousand times stronger, that never ceases to act, which binds the system in one compact indissoluble union.

Born, educated, and marshalled under such an influence, Americans cannot be surprised that Britons regard king, lords, and commons as the perfection of government, and that they proudly sustain it, individually and collectively, as the only form worthy of their support. Of course they must look upon every other form as weak and defective, incapable of upholding and defending the rights and privileges of the subject, and the legitimate object of their ridicule and contempt.

Under the active influence of such a system, without the practical means of judging of the effects of the supreme power of the state lodged in the hands of the people, and incapable of appreciating the advantages of a delegated authority, is it not just and reasonable to conclude that the government of England is better adapted to the taste, humor, and affections of Englishmen than any other? A free representative government, like our own, cannot exist in England, and never did exist, nor in any part of Europe to any considerable extent. The middle and subordinate classes of society have precisely the same feelings of attachment to their government and to the respective ranks in which they move, as their superiors. The face of society, under the rule of such a system, must, in the nature of things, take its general features from the higher ranks of the community, and not at all from the humbler walks of life. The compari

son, therefore, when made in reference to our own country utterly fails. There are no points of similarity. The same standard of measurement cannot apply to monarchial and republican manners, and the error lies in attempting to combine principles which have no affinity. I do not make these remarks with a view of derogating in the slightest degree from that reciprocal homage due from one British subject to another, but to show the inconsistency of that acrimonious spirit too often manifested upon both sides of the water, the working of a system fundamentally different from our own, and the influence which that system must have upon the mind and character of individuals, and of consequence upon the aspect of society.

No person in England, below the rank of a peer, presumes to hold familiar intercourse with a peer; it would be to carry war into the entrenched camp of the most privileged order, and to break down the barriers of aristocratic society. I remember a case in point which occurred a few years ago in the neighborhood of London. A friend of mine, a mercantile gentleman, and a bank director, invited a codirector, who happened to be a baron, to dine with him. He accepted the invitation. When dinner was announced, my friend reserved for the baron the honor of handing his own lady to the dining room. To his signal mortification, the honor was declined, upon the ground that she was not a titled lady, and the baron had the honor of walking into the dining room by himself.

The baron acted agreeably to the etiquette of court. But as he accepted an invitation to dine with a commoner, it may well be doubted whether he acted agreeably to the etiquette of a gentleman. At all events the incident serves to illustrate my views of the distinction of rank, and to show the pertinacity with which that distinction is maintained. My friend, himself, would not accept an invitation to dine with a tradesman, nor would he, under any circumstances, invite a tradesman to dine with him. In fact, he dare not. The customs of the country will not admit of it. Were he to make such an assault upon the spirit of feudalism and the etiquette of his rank, all his friends, of equal standing, would

forsake him. They would consider themselves insulted, and would decline a future invitation.

The same principle of exclusion runs through all the various ranks I have specified. I do not mean with an undeviating uniformity never to be departed from, but as a general rule by which English society is governed.

Upon national festivals, as Christmas, or any other gala day, it is common for the lords of the soil to invite their tenants, the wealthy merchants, bankers, and manufacturers, their clerks and servants, to their festive halls; but they dine in the kitchen or some other equally appropriate apartment-seldom with their host.

There is not a man in England who is not aristocratical in feelings towards all below him. It is an impossibility that it should be otherwise, and any pretence to the contrary is sheer deception. Hence, you will perceive. that the scattered fragments of the feudal system still float upon the current of society, and carry with them the most ample testimony of the original wreck. It is upon this principle that one can easily account for the fire of indignation which blazed in the bosom of the author of "American Notes," whose name it is well enough to forget, and made him ashamed to acknowledge his own country men whom he happened to meet in his journey from Philadelphia to Washington. He speaks of their having settled in America-of their gross and barbarous familiarity of daring to address him by way of question and answer, and of demeaning themselves as if they were his equals. Here one sees the feudal spirit developed in all the brilliancy of its native hues, emanating, it must be admitted, from a very subordinate cast, but, nevertheless, just as strong and unbending as if he were born to command. All that rampant self-estimation, engraved upon the bone and nursed in the flesh, broke from its moorings the moment he met with those from whom he expected reverence and submission, and which from the same family feeling would undoubtedly have been rendered in their own country. But they had resided in America a sufficient length of time to neutralize their national sympathies.— They were not themselves aware of the

slightest rudeness. They may have been landed proprietors, cultivating their own farms, independent in their circumstances, judging of mankind by their moral worth and personal excellence, and in no respect inferior to the author, nay, perhaps, of two, the better man. In them the spirit of feudalism had evaporated. In the author it still held sovereign sway. He brought his monarchial pack with him, and had not discernment enough to discover that he had strayed from the market.

Lady Montague, writing from Vienna to her friends in England, notices the fastidious manner in which points of rank were maintained at the Austrian court. In the narrow streets of that capital, where it was impossible to pass each other, two coaches driving in opposite directions met; each of the ladies in the two coaches claimed the prerogative of rank, and consequently each refused to back out and give place to the other. There they sat until two o'clock in the morning, and resolved to continue sitting rather than give up the point of precedence, until death should step in and settle the controversy.

In order to clear the street, encumbered with two such loads of dignity, the emperor sent his guards to part them. The ladies, however, refused to move an inch, until the ingenious expedient was hit upon of taking them both out of their carriages at the same time, and in the same manner, and conveying them away in chairs. Thus the honor and rank of both were most signally vindicated. The passion for order is so omnipotent, especially among the ladies, that they mourn upon the death of their husbands, and are ready to break their hearts out of pure grief, because that fatal event puts an end to their rank.

The moral influence of the various co-existing and yet mutually independent ranks of the social condition of England is inconceivably great and powerful. The idea of reverence for rank, irrespective of personal merit, descends from the crown to the lowest stratum of society. Wealth in all countries carries a modified influence, but is no ground for the distinction of order. One of the most remarkable features in this arbitrary system-arbitrary in our republican view of the subject, is the fact, that the custom of ages has

made subserviency as much a universal law as if it were sanctioned by legislative acts. I am quite aware that it is a common and a fashionable thing for my countrymen to attribute the thoughtfulness and reserve and distance observable in the English character to pride and haughtiness. Nothing can be more erroneous. It is a part of the system. The manners of the people are the natural and necessary result of the form of government under which they live. From the remarks already suggested, it must be evident that the very existence of the ruling principle of aristocracy depends upon the exclusiveness of rank and class; and the strict maintenance of that principle resolves itself into a moral and civil duty, and is no evidence of pride or haughtiness, notwithstanding it has all the appearance of being both, in the view of one who has not been taught to see the reason why it is necessary.

Undoubtedly that kind of demeanor in a republican would justly be considered as undeniable evidence of the highest arrogance and supercilious bearing, for just the same reason in its inverse application, that he has no exclusive rank to sustain by the requirements of the society in which he moves, and no inferior artificial ranks against whose encroachments he is bound to guard.

Whether or no such a system is desirable in the abstract is not the question we are considering, but whether it be consistent with the civil rights, habits, and enjoyments of those who choose to live under its sway, and believe it to be the only one suited to their social wants and national happiness.

Surely there need be no more pride and arrogance in an aristocrat maintain. ing aristocracy than there is in a republican maintaining republicanism. The thing is the same, working through different channels, and combining with different elements. I do not suppose there is one whit of difference in reference to the nature of pride in the whole human family; but the forms of society, the course of education, and the moral discipline of all kinds of religion, give different directions to its current, as it sweeps along within more contracted or more extended embankments.

The moral discipline of aristocracy is an every-day affair, and plies itself

upon every individual in the state; so that the strangest of all things would be that of being jostled out of his rank and brought to a level of equality with one beneath him. That would be a degradation-an exilement from everything held most dear, a stripping off and wrenching away the golden ligatures that bind him to the social compact.

We may therefore conclude that the service and voluntary discipline of aristocracy are regarded by Englishmen as such extraordinary privileges, that no charms of popular allurement, no promise of equalized greatness, and no hopes of public plunder, will ever induce them to relinquish. The government is exactly suited to the people, and the people to the government.The wheels move with singular harmony, without forcing the will of the subject, impairing his liberty, or endangering the public security. No marvel then that a nation, thus charmed with royalty, and attached to all its details, always rises instinctively as one man at the thrilling melody of "God save the King."

Every sensible man condemns a malignant and acrimonious spririt, because it betrays a want of benevolence and of that delicate sensibility of Christian principles which ought to lead the mind to make another's woes or another's wrongs, whether real or imaginary, its own. We justly complain of the taunting, vituperative and contemptuous spirit which breathes in European publications, and which comes to our shores floating upon every breeze. "The Model Republic" is the target of ridicule; the manners of the people, the peculiarities of our institutions, and even universal

religious toleration, are fruitful topics for untempered wit and sarcastic declamation. But whilst we see and feel all this, it may be well to consider whether we, ourselves, are entirely exempt from the indulgence of the same censorious spirit which we so promptly condemn in others.

We choose a republican form of government, and demand what right have other nations to interfere with that choice?-to launch, with an unscrupulous hand, their envenomed arrows from the quiver of wit and ridicule against institutions of which they have at best but a theoretic knowledge?

England chooses a monarchy, and what occasion have we to object to that choice, and to storm the fortress of her aristocracy with congressional artillery, because incompatible with our notions of a wise and popular government ?— So long as we are satisfied with our choice of system, ought we not to allow other nations to be satisfied with theirs? The mutual asperity which pervades the public mind, and disturbs the tranquillity of society, on the ground of a difference in the form of government and its consequences, discovers a diseased intellect, and must result in reciprocal alienation and the blotting out of every particle of Christian benevolence and amiable sentiment. The only good point of humanity which survives "the loss of Paradise," and the richest fragment of that blissful state, is sacrificed.

In my next communication I purpose to take a short view of the aspect of society in the United States, and to show why the manners of the people are and ought to be essentially different from those of a monarchy.

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