The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-07 00:00:00

2 I

THE COLD SHADE OF ARISTOCRIVIr....44e:z":24-,-,...
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It is said of Albert, philosopher and statesman as it(ily:
as Prince, that among his fatniliars he is in the hal
speaking of his wife's reign as the last that England wltt-*
see or endure. Seeing the working of our constitution as
a spectator, and in its theory merely, and not having had
the advantage of imbibing its genius into his instincts,
or assimilating it by the slow digestion of nativity and
" manner-born" habit to his mental system, it is difficult
for him, a stranger, to conceive how a monarchy can
survive unlicensed printing, free discussion, open meet-
ing, vote by ballot, and household suffrage. He has
yet to learn that our public opinion, and constitutional
system, like the huge rocking stones of Stonehenge, a
mystery to the engineer, may be moved by the touch of
a child, but may not be subverted from its base by the
strength of a thousand Titans. The monarchy is stronger
now than it was in the reign of Charles 11., than it was
fifty, aye thirty, years ago. Before the revolution it
was based upon devices of our constitution and shared
up by surrounding institutions—now it stands firm upon
the broad foundation of public opinion—the deliberate,
sifted, amply shaken and discussed convictions of the
great body of the people. The trash that was effused
about its expensiveness has long been shotten into the
limbo of the inane. Every addition to the population
divides the burden of the cast—the disbursements of
the exchequer for the monarchy proper do not reach
sixpence per head of the population. Indeed the private
patrimonial estate of the Sovereign, had it been properly
managed by the nation, would have amounted to aaloh
more than the salary which the State in its wisdom has
substituted as an equivalent for the appropriation of it.
The temporary popularity of the Republican system
among enthusiasts waned, from the time it began to be
suspected that the Government of the United States
was not so cheap as had been supposed ; and that,
taking into account the fact that not only had a federal
Government to be paid, but a Senate and Congress of
paid legislators for every State, governors, secretaries,
treasurers, supreme and district and county courts ; in-
deed the charges of 26 "sovereign States," three or four
territories and increasing " annexations," burdened with
three hundred million dollars of State debts, no standing
army, and only a small frigate navy, to be provided for,
"liberty, equality, and fraternity" had not• so much
reason to exalt its horn above the old-fashioned machine
of King, Lords, and Commons, with ten times the po-
pulation to govern over every part of the globe. Chart-
ism is gone, forgotten, dead and damned at Snig's End.
There are no troops in the country, yet nobody has any
fear of disorder. Our masses have adjourned to Bala-
klava, and the most remarkable thing about them, next
to their devoted valour, is their discipline under influ-
ences that might have destroyed it, and their uncom-
plaining faithfulness and cheerful loyalty to their officers.
The whole machinery of Government and legislation
has become so obedient to the helm of public opinion,
all men have become so obsequious to it, that the people
care for none of their old watchwords, and think less
about how improvements are to be made law than
what are improvements. No. It is not in the direc-
tion of the monarchy that the shoe pinches. We are
all loyal now. Class legislation is practically at an
end. It is clearly seen whatever the people want to have
done will be done ; and so politics have of late taken a
very practical, and no longer a speculative political shape.
We have attained to the test of political perfectibility,
the state-craft millennium of old Euripides
This is true liberty, when free-born men,
Having to advise the people, may speak out;
Which he who can and will deserve high praise;
Who neither can nor will may hold his peace.
Heaven knows that the people have as many advisers as
Job, or the hare with many friends ; as for "speaking
out," stump orators are as thick as blaekberriee, in Par-
liament and out of it. No man (still less any woman)
believes he can't speak ; and the number who won't are
infinitesimally small. Tacitus was a Roman and Epicene
a Greek. Except deaf mutes, we are all tolerable talkers
in England in this 19th century of Exeter-Hallery, the
London Tavern, and tremendous cheering. The point
at which we seem to have arrived in the discussion of
our constitutional theory is this :—We are satisfied to
retain the monarchy ; we cannot well do without a peo-
ple; we begin to suspect that great bazaar of slack jaw,
called the House of Commons, to be neither ornamental
nor useful, but only a grievous infliction on the long
ears of strangers in the gallery, and the aching eyes
of column devourers ; and the Times has settled it
in its mind that " the Second Estate is a futila and
ineffectual imposthume upon the body politic, that
must be cut out like any other wen or carbuncle,
that the symmetry of society may be restored. It is
now fully 200 years since John Milton thus spoke out :
" Lords and Commons of England 1--Consider what na-
tion whereof it is ye are, and whereof ye are the gover-
nors ; a nation net slow nor dull, but of a quick, inge-
nious, and piercing spirit ; acute to invent, subtile and
sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point,
the highest that human capacity can soar to. What
could a man require more from a nation so pliant, and
so prone to seek after knowledge ? What wants there
to such a towardly and pregnant soil but wise and faith.
ful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of
prophets, sages, and worthies." Well. We have paid
ourselves the very pretty compliment of thinking that
we are all these fine things that Milton said we might
h. Rut Cr, all that the Czar is Inn many far us, both
in the Cabinet and in the field. We can neither "flee&
the fule nor fecht him," and Mr. Ferret Roebuck "put
a motion on the notice paper" to find out the cause.
Lord John Russell has turned King's evidence. He has
peached against his colleagues and his order. He says
the Gordons and Clintons and Herberts are not fit to
hwtohne'yt msbaoruchldti4hrnlgz Ifivtg9t
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ot rvye
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Confident
lead the nation in war or govern the country in difficulty ;
aalntdhOhueg
in the strength and genius of the people—alarmed at the
incompetency of their governors and the danger of the
State, he may fitly conclude with the expostulation ofCrom-
well's secretary, " What should ye do then ? Should ye
suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light,
springing daily in this city ? Should ye set an oligarchy
to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we
shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their
bushel ? Believe it, Lords and Commons ! they who
counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye
suppress yourselves 1" It is not our intention here to
examine the justice of the conclusion here pointed at.
The fact that the people have settled it in their minds
that aristocratical privilege is an evil—is a theme large
enough for one discourse. Patronage is abolished
throughout the entire offices in the gift of the East.
India Company. Nothing but qualification, e1an,...), and
zeal, are henceforward of any avail in attaining to' the
high position of a curried liver, a bad temper, lace of
rupees, and a bungalow at Cheltenham. Our other co-
lonies will no longer submit to be governed by " mother
country" nominees, and they now select their officers
from their ablest settlers. The Cabinet put before an
ungrateful public an honest and excellent measure for
administering "the patronage of our domestic civil ser-
vice entirely on the principle of detur digniori—opening
the career of fortune to merit, and affording to every
citizen an equal chance of reaping the rewards of desert.
The Army, the Navy, the Ordnance, the highest offices
of State, were still preserves of the aristocracy, to which
indeed they might admit a few plebeian game-keepers,
but only for the purpose of beating off democratical
poachers, keeping the p'easures of the grand battu of
places entirely to themselves. Amid disease, disaster,
extremity, defeat and death, the nation demands a victim
now, as it did when it shot Admiral Byng • and, helped
to its conclusion by the revelations of Lord John Russell,
it has settled it in its mind, and has resolved to apply
the conclusion to its future policy, that the arist e acy
are no longer fit to direct war from the Cabinet, or to
command and carry it on in the field. The democratic
constitution of the French army is compared and con-
trasted with the oligarchical composition of ours—St.
Arnaud and Canrobert, Besquet and Omer Pacha, are
measured with Raglan, Cardigan, Cambridge, and Lucan
—the good crier, sound heath, efficiency and comfort
of the former are attributed to the strict impartiality of
promotion and the facility with which it opens its
honours to real merit in the lowest ; while the conver-
sion of our splendid troops into a demoralised mob of
starvinggrumblers or fever-eaten patients, is assigned
solely to the utterignorance, incompetency, and unfaith-
fulness of officers promoted, not for their services, but
their birth, and appointed through interest, nut on ac-
count either of their knowledge or ability, That is the
" fixed idea" which has been worn into the public mind
by the events of the war, the diatribes of the Times, an I
the ex-officio information laid before Parliament by
that volunteer Attorney-General of Providence, the
late President of the Council. Henceforth the
prestige and privileges of the order of Peers in this
country are gone--and, substantially, we cannot believe
that the institution itself can long remain behind. In fact,
aristocracy without perquisites is simply ridiculous.
There are still nominal Lords in France, even in Ger-
' many and Russia ; but they but crawl about and creep
under the huge legs of absolutism, to find themselves dis-
honourable graves. Here they have had real power and
prerogative—place kept for them, distinction ;lid emolu-
ment reserved for their exclusive acceptance—experi-
ence, knowledge, ability, diligence, genius, all put aside,
that their nursed and dandled order might mount into
the avenues of greatness and wealth. The nation says
that aristocracy has annihilated 40,000 of the finest
troops in the world, and dishonoured England in the face
of ally and of enemy—even brought danger, perhaps de-
feat and dishonour, upon the country—it says that it is
sick of aristocracy—" the Lord deliver us from aristo-
cracy !"—aristocracy is a futility—a plated Brummagem
article that only glitters in the shop window, and turns
yellow and brown when it comes to the rubs of use—
therefore, aristocracy, begonefrom real business, from pub-
lic life, fi•om government, or war, or place or power, into
the obscure of mere Belgravian atalinackism aid consti-
tutional carriage driving in the Park, to see and to be
seen, in search of an appetite for di • nner We shall no
longer endure
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes !
That is undoubtedly the conclusion, let " debaters " dis-
pute ever so much about the premises. The people ask
1 for success, and will not hear of reasons why we have
failed, be hey ever so logical. They will have victory,
not excuses. They say it is the vice of mediocrity that
it is always unlucky, which is the euphuism for unable
and unwise—the virtue of genius, that it has uo difficul-
ties—that it swallows formulas—that, like Alexander, it
compels fortune, and forces the Sybil to vaticinate Tie.
tory. They say to Newcastle, and Herbert, and Raglan,
and Dundas, and Napier, " Get ye home ! frame no ex-
cuses ! Enough, you have failed ! Where are our
legions ? We will cashier and cashier leader after
leader, until the man comes forth on whose helmet an
eagle perches. It is no longer among lords that we look
to find him I" Weekly Dispatch.

THIS EVENING, FEB. 6,


ROYAL MAIL STEAM - PACKET COM-
PANY.—NoTicz IS HEREBY GIVEN, That in ,:onsequenca
of the Lords Commissioners cf the Admiralty having withdrawn-
In-
the SEVERN from the nail Contract service, for employment in 5o is
n
veyance of Sick and Wounded Troops, the SOLENT Steam-ship.
appointed to leave Southampton witk the next Brazil Mails on
SUNDAY the 1 1 th, instead of the 9th instant.
By Order of the Court of Directors.
E. CHAPPELL, Secretary.

SHOPKEEPERS wanting Amsistants, or Etn-
k, ployers wanting Workmen, or nousekeepers wanting Ser-
vant., may Advertise their Wants in the LABOUR LIST awl
-UNIVERS GAZETTE of EMPLOY MENT, at th
Editor
"Labour List," 69, Fleet-street, London. Six Postage Stamps
received as pa} ment by Post.
Published every Tuesdiy and Friday ilroming, at the Office, 69,
Fleet-street. Price 2d. Sold by all booksellers.

DILURY-1. AN E.—Lelsee, Mr. E. T. Smith.—
Reduc,cl Prices as usual.— A Morning Performance every
IVednosday, at Two o'clock.

Will he performed MARIE, THE PEARL OF CHAMOUNY.
Characters by Messrs A. Belton, Raiford, Lingharn, Wor-
rell, and Walton; Misses Marriott, Arden, Love, and Mrs. Selby.
To concknie with the Pantomime of JACK AND JILL.

THEATRE ROYAL EIA.YMAKKET.
Under the management of Mr. Blackstone.
THIS EVENING, FEB. 7,
Will be performed the Tragedy of ROMEO AND JULIET.
Romeo, Mt s Cushm in ; Juliet, Miss SwantJorough.
Yellowed by the new grivid Christmas Pantomime, entitled LITTLE
P.O-PEEP; or, Etarlequin and the Girl who Lost her Sheep. Little
80-Peep, Mile L. Thompson; Harlequin, Mr. Chapin(); Pantaloon,
Mr. W. Barnes; Clown, Mr. Appleby; Columbine, Miss M. Brown.

T.OYAL PRINCE33'S THEATRE, OX '3F
Under the Management of Mr. CHARLES KLAN.
THIS EVENING, FEB. 7,
Will be performed HAMLET. Pi4ncipal character by Mr. C.
Kean.

After which will be produced a New Grand Christmas Pantomime.
entitled, HARLEQUIN BLUE-BEARD; or, The Great Bashaw
Harlequin, Mr. Cormack ; Clown, Mr. Hahne; Pantaloon, Mr. Paulo
and Columbine, Miss Desborongh.

ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE.
Under the Management of Madame Vestrie..
THIS EVENING, FEB. 7,

Will be performed AGGRAVATING SAM. Principal character
by Mr. C. Matnewn.
After which will be produced the new and original Fairy Extra-
vaganza, entitled PRINCE PRETTICFET and THE BUTTERFLY.
To be followed by TWO HEADS ARE BETTER TRAIT ONE.
Box-office open from 10 until 6.
Sole agent for Private Boxes, Mr. Aileron, 15, New-Bond-street.

THEATRE ROYAL ADELPIII.
proprietor. Mr. B. Webster.—Directress, Madame Celeste.
THIS BYENINO, FEE. 7,

Will be performed a new and criginal Drama, preceded by a Pro-
logue, and canal JANET PRIDE.
To be follewed by a New Grand DIVER fIS,;E:dENT.
After which, DO.N.A. FIDE TRAVELLERS.
To which will bit added the Farce entitled TILE RAILWAY
nrtLE.

ROYAL OLYMPIC THEATRE.
Lessee and Manager, Mr. A. Wi;;an.
THIS EVEN-LNG, FEB. 7,
WW be presentecl the xew Comedietta; called TIT FOR TAT, in
which Messrs. F. Robsow, N. Wigan, and Miss Maskell will appear.
After which, a new Fairy Extravaganza, entitled TILE YELLOW
DWARF AND THE KING OF THE. GOLD MLNES. Characters
by aII. F. itobsost, Miss Julia St. Geo, ge, Miss E. Ormonde, Miss
Marston, Miss Bromley. and Mrs. Fitzallan.
Tb eonclud© with A WIFE'S JOURNAL.