The citizen. [volume] (Berea, Ky.) 1899-1958, 1905-06-01


1t originated and was perpetuated for
two centuries until 1860 in the same way its
British predecessor. Somebody has said Sixty
thousand thieves came over with William the
Conquerer and founded the British Aristocracy."
OF course the descendants of the Norsemen
pirates at that date, would hardly dispute this
title of nobility" But the original British
nobility came up precisely as the leading class in
Boston, New York and Chicago to-day-by pro-
motion for ability OF the kind then most in de
mand Almost annihilated by the Wars of the
Roses and the Protestant Reformation the
Noble Lords" were renewed in the way
BY the promotion of men who in some way had
rendered service TO the state To-day the British
nobility is what il is because it lives with its
front door wide open, with the possibility that
any ambitious and able boy can be added to its
ranks for service in any profession, from every
class and calling.
The arstocracy that governed the South and
politically governed the nation till 1860 was built
on no such foundation of "hay, straw and stubble'
as an hereditary descent from its cousins in
NIotherland. Indeed, the North in 1860, were it
interested in heredity, could trace as mobile"
heritage. Three hundred years ago Virginia
included the present United States from the
had "set up his Ebenezer" There was land to
burn" at the disposal of the Grown. Every man
who landed on the Southern Atlantic coast and
was enterprising enough TO make his own way
could become the possessor OF an estate that
would the envy OF a British country gen
tleman. The possession of slaves and FIRST, the
raising of tobacco afterwards the monopoly OF
cotton and sem-tropical productions. enabled
small percentage OF this people with true British
energy to forge to the front. The real distinction
of the British aristocracy is that from the first.
it has had a.libera wing to furnish leadership for
the masses on the way to the present control of
the House of Commons by the powerful Middle
Class Through the tolls and conflicts OF one
hundred and seventy-hve years this foremost class
of the South by 1870 had been educated up to the
British idea of liberal government and the de-
mand for the whole American white people of
British civic and personal rights.
It may well be said that at this period our
colonial was indeed the consummate flower Of
the British aristocracy. William f. Gladstone
said: when was boy, read the life Of George
Washington and believed him the greatest
that ever lived and I have never changed my
opinion" 1t was indeed significant that, from
this upper American class North and South,
century ago, there came to the front group OF
men who, according to the same authority, was
pronounced the most eminent of its age in the
fashioning of republican order of society and
government destined to become the common lot
of mankind.
Had it not been weighted to its final death
with the barbarsm OF negro slavery, this splendid
order of republican nobility, with
slavery the Sane the states it represented might
AristOcraey. have been indefinitely prolonged.
And for this burden it is hardly
responsible Three hundred years ago every
Christian nation was slave-holding, and the
masses of the continental European people in all
essential rights and opportunities were half a
century behind our ten millions of coored Ameri-
can citizens to-day. But no man or no class can
hold any other man or class in chattel slavery
without turning the back on every kind OF man
not of its own sort. SO from year to year the
save-holdng and dominant class, though de-
pendent on the Southern plain white people Tor
the sodery that cleared the land OF the savage
and fought its battles and cast its votes left IT
practically out OF account in the recognition Of its
fundamental right to education. and relied on
the few that struggled up from the ranks to
eminence to recruit It's own ranks.
But with all this drawback, this Aristocracy,
always in any emergency acting together, under
Jefferson Expanded" the republic to the summit
Of the Rocky Mountains, and under Polk Scott
and Fremont carried the flag to the Southwestern
Pacific shore. In 1860 there was probably no
body Of nobility in Europe so powerful, able to
plunge Christian nation into civil war for its
own existence, the class that under Jefferson
Davis for four years fought the Union, until
amid the thunder of cannon in Old Virginia, in
hearing distance of the sea beach smitten nv the