He expresses his surprise "that the fact which distinguishes England from all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light on her peculiarities,...has not attracted more attention,...and that habit has rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English themselves--that England was the only country in which the system of caste had been not only modified, but effectually destroyed.The nobility and the middle classes followed the same business, embraced the same professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with each other.The daughter of the greatest nobleman" (and this, if true of the eighteenth century, has become far more true of the nineteenth) "could already, without disgrace, marry a man of yesterday."...
"It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other.It would have been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long time past, no nobility, properly so called, have existed, if we take the word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained."...
"For several centuries the word 'gentleman'" (he might have added, "burgess") "has altogether changed its meaning in England; and the word 'roturier' has ceased to exist.In each succeeding century it is applied to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale" (as the "bagman" of Pickwick has become, and has deserved to become, the "commercial gentleman" of our day)."At length it travelled with the English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen indiscriminately.Its history is that of democracy itself."...
"If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not especially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, because its outline was indistinct, and its limit unknown: not so much because any man might be admitted into it, as because it was impossible to say with certainty when he took rank there: so that all who approached it might look on themselves as belonging to it;might take part in its rule, and derive either lustre or profit from its influence."Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever their special political party, are conservative in the best sense of that word.
For there are not three, but only two, classes in England; namely, rich and poor: those who live by capital (from the wealthiest landlord to the smallest village shopkeeper); and those who live by hand-labour.Whether the division between those two classes is increasing or not, is a very serious question.Continued legislation in favour of the hand-labourer, and a beneficence towards him, when in need, such as no other nation on earth has ever shown, have done much to abolish the moral division.But the social division has surely been increased during the last half century, by the inevitable tendency, both in commerce and agriculture, to employ one large capital, where several small ones would have been employed a century ago.The large manufactory, the large shop, the large estate, the large farm, swallows up the small ones.The yeoman, the thrifty squatter who could work at two or three trades as well as till his patch of moor, the hand-loom weaver, the skilled village craftsman, have all but disappeared.The handworker, finding it more and more difficult to invest his savings, has been more and more tempted to squander them.To rise to the dignity of a capitalist, however small, was growing impossible to him, till the rise of that co-operative movement, which will do more than any social or political impulse in our day for the safety of English society, and the loyalty of the English working classes.And meanwhile--ere that movement shall have spread throughout the length and breadth of the land, and have been applied, as it surely will be some day, not only to distribution, not only to manufacture, but to agriculture likewise--till then, the best judges of the working men's worth must be their employers; and especially the employers of the northern manufacturing population.What their judgment is, is sufficiently notorious.Those who depend most on the working men, who have the best opportunities of knowing them, trust them most thoroughly.As long as great manufacturers stand forward as the political sponsors of their own workmen, it behoves those who cannot have had their experience, to consider their opinion as conclusive.
