Seven English Cities eBook

for a living.  They have already had their will with the existing English state, until now that state is far more the servant of the people in fetching and carrying, in guarding them from hard masters and succoring them in their need, than the republic which professes to derive its just powers from the consent of the governed.  When one encounters this sort of Englishman, one thinks silently of the child labor in the South, of the monopolies in the North, of the companies which govern while they serve us, and one hopes that the Englishman is not silently thinking of them too.  He is probably of the lower classes, and one consoles one’s self as one can by holding one’s head higher in better company, where, without secret self-contempt, one can be more openly proud of our increasing fortunes and our increasing territory, and our warlike adequacy to a first position among the nations of the world.  There is no fear that in such company one’s national susceptibilities will be wounded, or that one will not be almost as much admired for one’s money as at home.  I do not say quite, because there are still things in England even more admired than money.  Certainly a very rich American would be considered in such English society, but certainly he would not be so much considered as an equally rich Englishman who was also a duke.

I cannot name a nobleman of less rank, because I will not belittle my rich countryman, but perhaps the English would think differently, and would look upon him as lower than the latest peer or the newest knight of the King’s creation.  The King, who has no power, can do almost anything in England; and his touch, which is no longer sovereign for scrofula, can add dignity and give absolute standing to a man whose achievements merit it, but who with us would fail of anything like it.  The English system is more logical than ours, but not so reasonable.  The English have seen from the beginning inequality and the rule of the few.  We can hardly prove that we see, in the future, equality and the rule of the many.  Yet our vision is doubtless prophetic, whatever obliquities our frequent astigmatism may impart to it.  Meantime, in its ampler range there is room for the play of any misgiving short of denial; but the English cannot doubt the justice of what they have seen without forming an eccentric relation to the actual fact.  The Englishman who refuses the formal recognition of his distinction by his prince is the anomaly, not the Englishman who accepts it.  Gladstone who declines a peerage is anomalous, not Tennyson who takes it.  As part of the English system, as a true believer in the oligarchically administered monarchy, Gladstone was illogical, and Tennyson was logical.

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