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    up the peerage , he is " Our right trusty and well-beloved cousin . ; The earl is served no better than the viscount j but the marquis is most honourable , our right trusty and entirely beloved cousin , ' and is a " most noble and puissant prince . " Whilst itduke is hi grace , " is besides " mostnoble , " and is a .. " most . high , noble , and potent prince '' into Ihe bargain , ¦ ¦ : Now it appears to us that one cannot exhaust the dictionary upon any set of men , either by way pf vituperation or praise without having some effect upon them . Sarah Duchess of Maryborough always lived as a princess , and we know now one duchess dowager who in her own house is as great as any queen alive . What Goldsmith said of Englishmen generally—that they had pride in their port , defiance in their eye—is essentially true of the linghsh aristocracy : it must be so . We cannot dispute the fact ; we must look for compensating qualities in them . To set apart any class ot men as a privileged class is not very consistent with modern progress , nor with true Christianity ; neither is a standing army , nor a hired advocate . Mr . Biglow hits the right nail on the head when he writes of war , — "I kinder thought Christ was agin war and pillage . An * didn't go shootin * folks down in Judee ;" which is certainly true . Neither did He establish a privileged class . Nothing can be more certain than that He rebuked his disciplesTor quarrelling for rank and precedence : " ¦ Let him who would be chief among you serve the rest . " The Quakers , the Moravians , and the Plymouth brethren totally exclude rank ; and surely these sects are good Christians . What then is the reason that we retain it—possibly find benefit from it—certainly bow down to the coronet ? . ¦ .,. There be several reasons . Expediency is perhaps chief of all . Archdeacon Paley , as many a Cambridge man will remember , not only gives his celebrated watch argument in proof of the design of the Creator of the world , but he gives a very curious illustration , that of the pigeon , to establish the Utility of kingship . I he . solid old reasoner is not more complimentary about the lords . " rhe design of n nobility in the British constitution is , " says he , ¦ ' first to enable the king to reward the servants of the public in a manner most grateful to them , and at a email expense to the public ; secondly , to ' fortify the regal power by surrounding it with an order of , men naturally allied to its interests ; thirdly , to stem the progress , of popular fury . " These reasons are now somewhat antiquated . Vie sire now pretty well aware that the nobility , cannot stem the popular fury : nny , that the people are no longer furious , but quite as well if not bet ) er informed on m 6 st matters than the peers ; but , says our author , " An hereditary nobility invested with a share of legislation - is averse to those prejudices . which actuate the minds of the vulgar ; accustomed to condemn the elamour of the populace , disdaining to receive laws and opinions from their inferiors in rank , they will oppose resolutions which are founded in the folly and violence of the lower part of the community !" That law of nations , Progress , which the peerage as a whole does not believe in , has . changed all this : — " Not in vain the distance beacons . Forward , forward let us range , Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change . The nation now debates , judges , pauses , and reflects , and seldom adopts that which is immature . Our neighbours accuse us pf slowness , but we know that our sloth is but deliberation . The House of Lords has helped us to gain this character , and the upper chamber of the senate hath more than once saved the nation . It laay bo all very well for the Manchester party to call the " Lords " a drag , and to liken them to that waggoner who put the drag on his wheel when he was going up hill ; if the Lords have now and then withstood a good measure , they have more often prevented bad ones 'from passing ; they have a certain dignified slowness in their pace , such as grave and reverend seigniors should have— -but on occasions they do their work splendidly , and reflect a credit on that great constitution of which they form a part . It is right , also , since the people can well ufiord to allow them , and since they are not , excessive , to have their ' privileges . What they are , Burke shall shortly ( ell us : — . " The Peerage of the British Empire , " says he , " illustrious beyond comparo by deeds and by descent " —Sir Bernard would use the name flourish pf the nobles of Hesse Homberg or the hereditary qnuncil of Fiji , — " 1 ms many privileges . " These , shortly , are : — Freedom from arrest in civil actions ; from attending at juries , courta-k-et , or sheriff's turns . To be tried in cases of treason or felony by their peers . To be allowed to give their judgment not on oath , ' but on their honour . To ( be tried in courts erected for tho purpose , in Westminster Hall , and at the expense of the crown ; of sitting covered in courts of justice during tho proceedings ; of voting in parliament by proxy ; of wowing" rpbos of dignity in parliament . Ony baron , Lord Kinflalo , has the privilege of being covered in the presoiu'o of royalty ; lastly , the whole pcorngo has the privilege of bearing supporters to their arms . All those , in effect , oro favours more in name than in reality . A duK-u is , after all , os muoh amenable to the law as a common man . That the law is expensive is not the peers'fault . Tho peerage is a high order in tho community , and is recruited from tho orders below . This brings us to the important article of descent . Puley , archdeacon nnd Tory though ho was , objected to fionio of their privileges ; but . in effect , they do not work badly —~ atotally worthless nobleman does not gain much by belonging to his order . It is only tho eyes of the vulgar and smnH-minded which are dazzled by the glory either of the coronet , tho robe , ov tho privileged station . ¦ . , As regards descent , in which wo learn from our author that tho

    peerage is . " illustrious beyond compare , " we shall find , on turning over the twelve hundred leaves ofBurke , that more than eight-tenths of the nobility claim , like our old friend Christophero Sly , to have come in with "Richard Conqueror , " of , to use Burke ' s words , William the Norman . This claim , small as it is , may , in the great majority of cases , be doubted . That excellent Conservative , Benjamin " DisEAEiii , in " Coningsby , " set it aside altogether , and asserted that the herald painters who decorate the panels of their lordships ' coaches , knew more of genealogy than the peers themselves .. " The question is , " said Coningsby , " ¦ whether a preponderance of the aristocratic principle in a political constitution be conducive to the stability of a state , and whether the peerage , as established in England , generally tends to that end . We must not forget in such an estimate the influence which , in this country , is exercised over opinion by ancient 1 vn & si vt& ' ' -. ' - ¦ " Ancient lineage I" said Mr . Milbank , " I never heard of a peer with , an ancient lineage . The real old families of this coiiutry are to be found among the peasantry ; the gentry , too , may lay some claim to old blood . I can point you out Saxon families in this country who can trace their pedigrees beyond the conquest ; . I know of some Norman gentlemen whose fathers , undoubtedly , came over with the Conqueror . But a peer with an ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty . No , no ; the thirty years of the Wars of the Roses freed us from those gentlemen . I take it , after the battle of Tewkesbury , a Norman was an uncommonly scarce animal . " Disraeli is not far from wrong . The belief in ancient lineage may be seductive , but the folly of blood relationship is easily exposed . Granted that we are descended from Alexanders or AgamemnoiiS s it does not follow that we are great , brave , and successful generals . An illustrious descent ,: like a light at the back of a ineau transparency , only shows iip the faults of a bad man , and can add no honour to a good one . Besides this , as more than sixty peerages are recently extinct , we may reasonably suppose that all great houses do not "have heirs male . Macaula : y was first and last peer of his house . The Duke of Wellington was not a Wellesley ; his name was Colley ; his grandfather , Richard Colley , assumed the name of Wesley , since euphonised into Wellesley . The Earl of Clarendon is not a Hyde—paternally , he is a Villiers . The Duke of Northumberland is not a Percy ; his real name i * Smithson ; his ancestor . Sir Hugh Smithson , having received the honours of the house of Percy simply because his wife ' s grandmother ^ yas a Percy . The Marquis of Normanby , though Constantine Phipps , contrived to get a re-creafcion of the Normandy title belonging to Constantine Phipps ' s mother's first husband . L _ ord Strafford is not a Wentworth ; Lord Wilton is not an . Egerton- ; Lord de Tabley is not a Warren . Earl Nelson is paternally a Bolton ; his father was Thomas Bolton , his grandmother , the great Nelson ' s sister . Lord Anglesea is not a Paget ; his grandfather ' s name was Bayley . The Duke of Marlborough is not a Churchill , his real name being Spenser ; lie bears the Churchill arms and title because his ancestor married the great duke ' s daughter . We have here—and we might multiply instances till our readers would tire—three great names , Wellington . Marlborougli , arid Nelson , in whose blood we have shown a deflection which should make one pause before boasting of high descent , letting pass without mention the accidents of spurious offspring , to which every great house is subjected as well as every poor house . Our last instance shall be of a man of genius , or , at any rate , of successful talent , who has won for himself , by his political cleverness , an hereditary title—Sir Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer Lytton . Of him , Burke , aided no doubt ( aince he claims and solicits original information ) , by the novelists own pen , says , " Sir Bulwer is the third son of William Enrle Bulwer , of Heydon Hull and Wood balling-, Norfolk , Esq ., Brigadier General , by Elizabeth Barbara his wife , daughter , and sole heiress' of Richard Warburton Lytton , of Knebworth Park , Herts . This gentleman was descended , '' says the authority , in a note , " from Turold , surnamed Bplver , one of the war titles of Odin . The lands of Dalling , conferred upon this Norman by William the Conqueror , we still in possession of his descendant . " Descendant , —how P The blood has twice run out in the male line ; and the name should be cither Robinson , or Warburton—rnot one ounce , we should think , of that belonging to the " Lytton who fought at Askalon , " or the gentleman who took quo of tho war titles of tho Saxon god , remaining in the family . Many is the time that we have wondered at the delicate Norman face of Sir Buhvor , as shown in Maclirte ' s portrait ) , and thought of his great noble ' s , his gentle highwaymen , and his philosophic murderer , Eugene Aram ; but until wo saw him in the flesh , wo only awoke from half the dream to find that ho had little claim to Norman blood , and entrq nous , as little to the Norman likeness . The many wars and vicissitudes which this kingdom has undergone , have of course thinned the ranks of theNorman peers . Of the aggregate number of peers , our list at tho beginning of this article will give some proximate notion . They amount to several hundred . Yet after tho cessation of the Wars of tho Kobcs , twenty-eight temporal lords only wore left to meet in Parliament ; in Henry VIII . s time , there wore only thirty-six in his first parliament } on the accession of Queen Elizabeth only fifty-six ; and so on . George III . was a great peer maker , and created upwards of two hundred and nity British , and two hundred and sixty-eight Irish peers . Looking Jit tho peerage from those points , wo shall conclude with the maxim of' Bosola in Webster ' s " Dutchesa of Malty , " that—«« GlarioB , Hkq glow-worms . ufar off , Bhino bright , JJufc ftpen too near , give neither ueat nor light . Tho exorbitant prdtonaioiuHf som " e to high birth , and the exaggerated notions of others in regard to tho benefits to bo derived therefrom , make such u review of tho truth necessary . A peer , after all , can only bo a titled gentleman , and can tfam nothing Mom

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    Jan . 28 , 1860 . J The Leader and Saturday Aiialysi . 89

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 28, 1860, page 89, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2331/page/13/