The herald., 1898-01-11
CLASS DISTINCTIONS
HOW THEY ARE VANISHING IN
ENGLAND
A Great Change Has Taken Place
From the Rule of Sixty
Years Ago

We wish some one of the many
thoughtful observers who are studying
social development in Western Europe
would deliver a careful lecture, or write
a wellweighed paper, upon the social
rise within this century of the English
middle class. We believe 1t has been
at least as great as the elevation of the
workman, though it is not as easy to
describe. owing to the difficulty of recall
ing, without the aid of books, the diff
ferences which have been established in
shades of manner.
We should not know how to establish,
for instance, the fact that the similarity
in modes Of life which now exists in
London at all events among all grades
of society, had arisen within the last
fifty years. and was the result of very
curious change in feeling, as well as Of
system under which many grades
ranging downwards from the top are
now educated exactly alike. The child
of the professional Is now taught not
only in the same way, but by the same
men, as the child of the peer, the only
difference being that the former, partly
from hereditary aptitude, partly from
sense that he has to live by his edu-
cation, learns little quicker and forces
himself to study with a little less re-
luctance. Manners have been equal
ized, like education, until the classes are
indistinguishable except upon particu-
lar occasions; the most real distinction,
perhaps, being that the well-born man
of from twenty to thirty has usually
about him some flavor of the country
squire and the professional man some
thing of the air Of citizenship, differ
ence derived in both cases from early
association. Almost all men would, we
believe, on reflection acknowledge the
fact, but very few are aware how very
recent the equalization Of the different
castles has been, or how great sixty
years ago was the difference in social
estimation between the professionals
and the squires.
1t has nearly all passed away-not
quite; a dislike for the shop still lin
gering, so that a clergyman glad to OBJ
tain a good place in one for his boy
always speaks OF him as "in a city berth
and the cause has not been entirely
the new passion for income, or the as
founding rise in the degree of happiness
which income can secure. The thirst fol
| money has gone deep, no doubt, and
has visibly debased tha poorer aristoc-
racy, who, as Punch says in this years
"Conic Almanac" are all worshipins
Ike" on his return from johannesburg
but the new value placed on education
has done more than the money greed
Anybody may enter any profession now
and the professionals do not make grea,
fortunes, while the fortunes they dc
make have, as regards the interest they
yield, been cut at blow in half. The
class is far from a rich one, yet it has
completely survived contempt. Will
this change has also come a new way
of regarding the real rise from thu
ranks" that Is, from the position of tn
manual laborer. The reader can re
member when it was the height of dis
courtesy, indeed almost showed Inalig
nifty, to allude to such an incident il
q mans career; but now the biographe
pauses over it as something most cred
table to his hero. Men are still sensi
tive about their connection with shop.
the writer knew a bishop who could
never be persuaded that his critics were
not in their minds dwelling on that hlot
in his pedigree-but nobody would hest
tate to admit that his father welded
the hammer or worked In a sawpit, or
best occupation of all, followed the
plough. Sixty or seventy years ago he
would have recalled the fact with q
shudder, perhaps have paid heavily te
the pedigree-make to conceal it.-Lon.
don Spectator.