The influential politician was generally able to obtain rank. Rank was regarded as an admirable qualification for any office. The highest and lowest situations were lavished upon peers and their relations; and nothing was beneath the dignity of even a duke, provided that an adequate salary was attached to it. Nor were the sinecures the only places which were filled by the great governing families. The working offices of the State were similarly occupied. Commissioners and their secretaries owed comparatively little to their abilities. Their success in life was usually due either to their position or their birth. When the French war broke out in 1793, it never occurred to George III. that the command of the English army should be entrusted to a competent general. The natural leader of the king's army seemed to the king to be the king's son. When the incompetency of the Duke of York necessitated his recall, the king could not imagine that anyone else could be fit for the command except his own brother-inlaw.1 Rank, in short, was the passport to high office. Rank could be gained through political influence by any ambitious man; and the borough owners stuck accordingly to their privileges with a tenacity which withstood the onslaught of the reformers for forty years. CHAP. II. advan Rotten as the system was, deplorable as were its con- The only sequences, there were some compensating advantages con- tages of the nected with it. Men cannot take part in the struggles of system. a political career without mixing in society; and men fail to attain distinction, either in politics or society, without ability, information, and education. The ruling classes were so assured of this that they uniformly gave a polite education to their sons; and men of quality thought it as necessary to be versed in certain accomplishments as to be well dressed, or to be able to shoot. The ruling classes, moreover, conscious of their own inferiority in numbers, were ever on the look out to recruit their party 1 See George III.'s Letters to Pitt in Jesse, vol. iii. p. 210. CHAP. II. Educa tional defects. with any particularly promising young men. There is no doubt that this state of things was productive of one great national benefit. The door of the House of Commons was not solely opened to the wealthy, it was always ready to admit conspicuous talent. Men did not postpone their entry into Parliament till the close of their career, when success in business had enabled them to accumulate a fortune. Politics were the profession of their lives; the House of Commons their office, not the mere haven to which they retired in their old age. The prizes of political life, too, were so great, that they drew away the talent from other professions. Had they lived in Italy, to use Canova's striking illustration, Pitt and Fox would have been artists, and England would have had no reason to deplore her inferiority in art. A system, under which all the rising men of the day regarded politics as a profession, and under which politics were studied with exclusive attention, naturally tended to create statesmanship. A rising young man became a member of the House of Commons as soon as he came of age. Lord Liverpool was elected for Appleby, Fox for Midhurst, Lord John Russell for Tavistock, before they were twentyone years old. England then derived from the system the solitary advantage of having statesmen trained from their boyhood for their work; the more ambitious youth were certainly encouraged by the system to work at school and college, 1 1 Alison, vol. i. p. 450, note. The II. from the knowledge that success at school and college CHAP. might influence their whole career. A gentleman's education, indeed, was less complete than it is now. boys at Eton, for instance, were taught almost exclusively Latin and Greek; and an Eton education was supposed to be the very best which a parent could give his son. The Eton boy, on leaving school, could write Latin Elegiacs or Greek Iambics with admirable ease and grace; but he could not speak a word of any modern language except his own. He was perfectly acquainted with the great authors of the ancient world, but he had never read a line of Chaucer or Froissart. He had read the speeches of Cicero; but he hardly knew the name of Bolingbroke. He had studied the dialogues of Plato; but he was ignorant of the writings of Locke. He could discuss the campaigns of Hannibal or Julius Cæsar with judgment, but he could hardly repeat the names of Frederick the Great's battles. He regarded the Gracchi as patriots, but he had an obscure notion that Adam Smith was a dangerous character. He knew the boundaries of the Roman empire; he could not have repeated the names of the English colonies. Incomplete, however, as his education was, as far as it went it was admirable. The well educated man knew very little; but what he did know he knew very well. He had acquired very little serviceable information; but his mind was very well educated. Education is, after all, only the system under which the mind is trained. Men will perhaps always dispute whether physics or classics, mathematics or science, form the best subjects for training it. A man may bring his body into perfect condition by various kinds of exercise, and there is no reason for supposing that the mind may not be equally well trained by application to various kinds of studies. If, indeed, it were the object of school life to acquire a large stock of information, nothing could be worse than to devote the II. CHAP. greater portion of schooltime to the study of extinct and, so far as most men are concerned, useless languages. But ordinary men cannot acquire much information at school. They lay in their stores of knowledge when their education ceases; and, in this respect, our ancestors were certainly more advantageously situated than ourselves. In 1816, a man could not devote his whole time to reading novels, for the very good reason that there were only a few novels to be read. He was obliged, if he chose to read at all, to select books which on the whole were well worth reading. He read less than the modern Englishman, but the books which he did read were more useful to him. Educational institutions, however, were not free from the influence of the governing classes. Those who had the good fortune to be born in the purple were exempted at both Universities from the curriculum prescribed for ordinary students, and the visit of a monarch to a school was usually followed by the remission of a week's work. A whole term of academical study was dispensed with by the University of Oxford at the coronation of George IV. To remit a part of education,' wrote Ward to the Bishop of Llandaff, as you would remit a punishment, to what century does such a notion belong? A new reign then is to be reckoned as a joyous event for felons and undergraduates.'1 'The old English gentleman.' 6 It was, however, only the exceptional young man, with more than the average of ability and ambition, who was well educated and well informed. The ordinary English gentleman, if he were an elder son, lived on his paternal acres; if he were a younger son, he lived on the family living, or went abroad to fight his country's battles. There were few professions which a gentleman could enter. A clever boy was sent to the Bar; a dull boy was driven into the Church; a spirited lad was destined for the Navy, or, if he had money or interest, for the 1 Ward's Correspondence with the Bishop of Llandaff, p. 249. Army. But, outside the Bar, the Army, the Navy, and the Church, there was nothing which a gentleman could do. The prizes of the civil service were political, and the lower ranks of the offices were, with few exceptions, hardly good enough for the sons of a country gentleman. No one above the rank of an agricultural labourer would have dreamed of emigrating; no one with any pretensions to noble blood would have thought of going into trade. A gentleman's son would have rather died a pauper than have become a wine-merchant. CHAP. II. The eldest son succeeded as a matter of course to the paternal acres. He usually had many good qualities; but he had equally many infirmities. On the one hand he was honest and honourable, kind to his tenants, and, after a fashion, to the poor. On the other hand he still too frequently indulged in the sports, the language, and the habits which had been common among his forefathers. Men moving in high society could see a bull baited, a main of cocks fought, or the desperate struggles of the prize-fight, without losing caste. Men in good society were not ashamed to maintain that there was something peculiarly English in these brutal spectacles. The courage of the prize-fighter, the bulldog, and the cock, prompted men, so they thought, to noble deeds. After all, the prize-fighter's risk was smaller than that which was incurred by the duellist, and every gentleman was prepared at any moment to fight a duel. Duelling had Duels. probably its origin in that remote period when trial by combat was regarded with the solemnity of a judicial proceeding. It was sanctioned by the deeds of the knights errant and the hallowing reminiscences of the days of chivalry. Everyone remembers the page in Brougham's life, in which he tells the story of his brother Peter's death in a duel. But plain men like Peter Brougham were not the only duellists. A man could hardly enter a public career without running the risk of |