Benjamin Disraeli´s Sybil, or The Two Nations
Autor: Claudio Martins | Publicado: 2012-08-26T12:41:00-04:00



SYBIL, or THE TWO NATIONS

By Benjamin Disraeli



Book 2 Chapter 5

"You lean against an ancient trunk," said Egremont, carelessly
advancing to the stranger, who looked up at him without any expression of
surprise, and then replied. "They say 'tis the trunk beneath whose
branches the monks encamped when they came to this valley to raise their
building. It was their house, till with the wood and stone around them, their
labour and their fine art, they piled up their abbey. And then they were driven
out of it, and it came to this. Poor men! poor men!" 

"They would hardly have forfeited their resting-place had they
deserved to retain it," said Egremont. 

"They were rich. I thought it was poverty that was a crime,"
replied the stranger in a tone of simplicity. 

"But they had committed other crimes." 

"It may be so; we are very frail. But their history has been
written by their enemies; they were condemned without a hearing; the people
rose oftentimes in their behalf; and their property was divided with those on
whose reports it was forfeited." 

"At any rate, it was a forfeiture which gave life to the
community," said Egremont; "the lands are held by active men and not
by drones." 

"A drone is one who does not labour," said the stranger;
"whether he wear a cowl or a coronet, 'tis the same to me. Somebody I
suppose must own the land; though I have heard say that this individual tenure
is not a necessity; but however this may be, I am not one who would object to
the lord, provided he were a gentle one. All agree the Monastics were easy
landlords; their rents were low; they granted leases in those days. Their
tenants too might renew their term before their tenure ran out: so they were
men of spirit and property. There were yeomen then, sir: the country was not
divided into two classes, masters and slaves; there was some resting-place
between luxury and misery. Comfort was an English habit then, not merely an
English word." 

"And do you really think they were easier landlords than our
present ones?" said Egremont, inquiringly. 

"Human nature would tell us that, even if history did not confess
it. The Monastics could possess no private property; they could save no money;
they could bequeath nothing. They lived, received, and expended in common. The
monastery too was a proprietor that never died and never wasted. The farmer had
a deathless landlord then; not a harsh guardian, or a grinding mortgagee, or a
dilatory master in chancery, all was certain; the manor had not to dread a
change of lords, or the oaks to tremble at the axe of the squandering heir. How
proud we are still in England of an old family, though, God knows, 'tis rare to
see one now. Yet the people like to say, We held under him, and his father and
his grandfather before him: they know that such a tenure is a benefit. The
abbot was ever the same. The monks were in short in every district a point of
refuge for all who needed succour, counsel, and protection; a body of
individuals having no cares of their own, with wisdom to guide the
inexperienced, with wealth to relieve the suffering, and often with power to
protect the oppressed." 

"You plead their cause with feeling," said Egremont, not
unmoved. 

"It is my own; they were the sons of the People, like myself."


"I had thought rather these monasteries were the resort of the
younger branches of the aristocracy?" said Egremont. 

"Instead of the pension list;" replied his companion, smiling,
but not with bitterness. "Well, if we must have an aristocracy, I would
sooner that its younger branches should be monks and nuns, than colonels
without regiments, or housekeepers of royal palaces that exist only in name.
Besides see what advantage to a minister if the unendowed aristocracy were thus
provided for now. He need not, like a minister in these days, entrust the
conduct of public affairs to individuals notoriously incompetent, appoint to
the command of expeditions generals who never saw a field, make governors of
colonies out of men who never could govern themselves, or find an ambassador in
a broken dandy or a blasted favourite. It is true that many of the monks and
nuns were persons of noble birth. Why should they not have been? The
aristocracy had their share; no more. They, like all other classes, were
benefitted by the monasteries: but the list of the mitred abbots when they were
suppressed, shows that the great majority of the heads of houses were of the
people." 

"Well, whatever difference of opinion may exist on these
points," said Egremont, "there is one on which there can be no
controversy: the monks were great architects." 

"Ah! there it is," said the stranger, in a tone of
plaintiveness; "if the world but only knew what they had lost! I am sure
that not the faintest idea is generally prevalent of the appearance of England
before and since the dissolution. Why, sir, in England and Wales alone, there
were of these institutions of different sizes; I mean monasteries, and
chantries and chapels, and great hospitals; considerably upwards of three
thousand; all of them fair buildings, many of them of exquisite beauty. There were
on an average in every shire at least twenty structures such as this was; in
this great county double that number: establishments that were as vast and as
magnificent and as beautiful as your Belvoirs and your Chatsworths, your
Wentworths and your Stowes. Try to imagine the effect of thirty or forty
Chatsworths in this county the proprietors of which were never absent. You
complain enough now of absentees. The monks were never non-resident. They
expended their revenue among those whose labour had produced it. These holy men
too built and planted as they did everything else for posterity: their churches
were cathedrals; their schools colleges; their halls and libraries the muniment
rooms of kingdoms; their woods and waters, their farms and gardens, were laid
out and disposed on a scale and in a spirit that are now extinct: they made the
country beautiful, and the people proud of their country." 

"Yet if the monks were such public benefactors, why did not the
people rise in their favour?" 

"They did, but too late. They struggled for a century, but they
struggled against property and they were beat. As long as the monks existed,
the people, when aggrieved, had property on their side. And now 'tis all
over," said the stranger; "and travellers come and stare at these
ruins, and think themselves very wise to moralize over time. They are the
children of violence, not of time. It is war that created these ruins, civil
war, of all our civil wars the most inhuman, for it was waged with the
unresisting. The monasteries were taken by storm, they were sacked, gutted,
battered with warlike instruments, blown up with gunpowder; you may see the
marks of the blast against the new tower here. Never was such a plunder. The
whole face of the country for a century was that of a land recently invaded by
a ruthless enemy; it was worse than the Norman conquest; nor has England ever
lost this character of ravage. I don't know whether the union workhouses will
remove it. They are building something for the people at last. After an experiment
of three centuries, your gaols being full, and your treadmills losing something
of their virtue, you have given us a substitute for the monasteries." 

"You lament the old faith," said Egremont, in a tone of
respect. 

"I am not viewing the question as one of faith," said the
stranger. "It is not as a matter of religion, but as a matter of right,
that I am considering it: as a matter, I should say, of private right and
public happiness. You might have changed if you thought fit the religion of the
abbots as you changed the religion of the bishops: but you had no right to
deprive men of their property, and property moreover which under their
administration so mainly contributed to the welfare of the community." 

"As for community," said a voice which proceeded neither from
Egremont nor the stranger, "with the monasteries expired the only type
that we ever had in England of such an intercourse. There is no community in
England; there is aggregation, but aggregation under circumstances which make it
rather a dissociating, than an uniting, principle." 

It was a still voice that uttered these words, yet one of a peculiar
character; one of those voices that instantly arrest attention: gentle and yet
solemn, earnest yet unimpassioned. With a step as whispering as his tone, the
man who had been kneeling by the tomb, had unobserved joined his associate and
Egremont. He hardly reached the middle height; his form slender, but well
proportioned; his pale countenance, slightly marked with the small pox, was
redeemed from absolute ugliness by a highly-intellectual brow, and large dark
eyes that indicated deep sensibility and great quickness of apprehension.
Though young, he was already a little bald; he was dressed entirely in black;
the fairness of his linen, the neatness of his beard, his gloves much worn, yet
carefully mended, intimated that his very faded garments were the result of
necessity rather than of negligence. 

"You also lament the dissolution of these bodies," said
Egremont. 

"There is so much to lament in the world in which we live,"
said the younger of the strangers, "that I can spare no pang for the
past." 

"Yet you approve of the principle of their society; you prefer it,
you say, to our existing life." 

"Yes; I prefer association to gregariousness." 

"That is a distinction," said Egremont, musingly. 

"It is a community of purpose that constitutes society,"
continued the younger stranger; "without that, men may be drawn into
contiguity, but they still continue virtually isolated." 

"And is that their condition in cities?" 

"It is their condition everywhere; but in cities that condition is
aggravated. A density of population implies a severer struggle for existence,
and a consequent repulsion of elements brought into too close contact. In great
cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state
of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all
the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our
neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour." 

"Well, we live in strange times," said Egremont, struck by the
observation of his companion, and relieving a perplexed spirit by an ordinary
exclamation, which often denotes that the mind is more stirring than it cares
to acknowledge, or at the moment is capable to express. 

"When the infant begins to walk, it also thinks that it lives in
strange times," said his companion. 

"Your inference?" asked Egremont. 

"That society, still in its infancy, is beginning to feel its way."


"This is a new reign," said Egremont, "perhaps it is a
new era." 

"I think so," said the younger stranger. 

"I hope so," said the elder one. 

"Well, society may be in its infancy," said Egremont slightly
smiling; "but, say what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest
nation that ever existed." 

"Which nation?" asked the younger stranger, "for she
reigns over two." 

The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly. 

"Yes," resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval.
"Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who
are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were
dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are
formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by
different manners, and are not governed by the same laws." 

"You speak of—" said Egremont, hesitatingly. 

"THE RICH AND THE POOR."