The Ancien Regime

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THE ANCIEN REGIME
by Charles Kingsley


PREFACE


The rules of the Royal Institution forbid (and wisely) religious or
political controversy. It was therefore impossible for me in these
Lectures, to say much which had to be said, in drawing a just and
complete picture of the Ancien Regime in France. The passages inserted
between brackets, which bear on religious matters, were accordingly not
spoken at the Royal Institution.

But more. It was impossible for me in these Lectures, to bring forward
as fully as I could have wished, the contrast between the continental
nations and England, whether now, or during the eighteenth century. But
that contrast cannot be too carefully studied at the present moment. In
proportion as it is seen and understood, will the fear of revolution (if
such exists) die out among the wealthier classes; and the wish for it (if
such exists) among the poorer; and a large extension of the suffrage will
be looked on as--what it actually is--a safe and harmless concession to
the wishes--and, as I hold, to the just rights--of large portion of the
British nation.

There exists in Britain now, as far as I can see, no one of those evils
which brought about the French Revolution. There is no widespread
misery, and therefore no widespread discontent, among the classes who
live by hand-labour. The legislation of the last generation has been
steadily in favour of the poor, as against the rich; and it is even more
true now than it was in 1789, that--as Arthur Young told the French mob
which stopped his carriage--the rich pay many taxes (over and above the
poor-rates, a direct tax on the capitalist in favour of the labourer)
more than are paid by the poor. "In England" (says M. de Tocqueville of
even the eighteenth century) "the poor man enjoyed the privilege of
exemption from taxation; in France, the rich." Equality before the law
is as well-nigh complete as it can be, where some are rich and others
poor; and the only privileged class, it sometimes seems to me, is the
pauper, who has neither the responsibility of self-government, nor the
toil of self-support.

A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with the
present state of things, will always exist in this world. But a majority
of malcontents we shall never have, as long as the workmen are allowed to
keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of free speech, free public
meeting, free combination for all purposes which do not provoke a breach
of the peace. There may be (and probably are) to be found in London and
the large towns, some of those revolutionary propagandists who have
terrified and tormented continental statesmen since the year 1815. But
they are far fewer in number than in 1848; far fewer still (I believe)
than in 1831; and their habits, notions, temper, whole mental
organisation, is so utterly alien to that of the average Englishman, that
it is only the sense of wrong which can make him take counsel with them,
or make common cause with them. Meanwhile, every man who is admitted to
a vote, is one more person withdrawn from the temptation to disloyalty,
and enlisted in maintaining the powers that be--when they are in the
wrong, as well as when they are in the right. For every Englishman is by
his nature conservative; slow to form an opinion; cautious in putting it
into effect; patient under evils which seem irremediable; persevering in
abolishing such as seem remediable; and then only too ready to acquiesce
in the earliest practical result; to "rest and be thankful." His faults,
as well as his virtues, make him anti-revolutionary. He is generally too
dull to take in a great idea; and if he does take it in, often too
selfish to apply it to any interest save his own. But now and then, when
the sense of actual injury forces upon him a great idea, like that of
Free-trade or of Parliamentary Reform, he is indomitable, however slow
and patient, in translating his thought into fact: and they will not be
wise statesmen who resist his dogged determination. If at this moment he
demands an extension of the suffrage eagerly and even violently, the wise
statesman will give at once, gracefully and generously, what the
Englishman will certainly obtain one day, if he has set his mind upon it.
If, on the other hand, he asks for it calmly, then the wise statesman
(instead of mistaking English reticence for apathy) will listen to his
wishes all the more readily; seeing in the moderation of the demand, the
best possible guarantee for moderation in the use of the thing demanded.

And, be it always remembered, that in introducing these men into the
"balance of the Constitution," we introduce no unknown quantity.
Statesmen ought to know them, if they know themselves; to judge what the
working man would do by what they do themselves. He who imputes virtues
to his own class imputes them also to the labouring class. He who
imputes vices to the labouring class, imputes them to his own class. For
both are not only of the same flesh and blood, but, what is infinitely
more important, of the same spirit; of the same race; in innumerable
cases, of the same ancestors. For centuries past the most able of these
men have been working upwards into the middle class, and through it,
often, to the highest dignities, and the highest family connections; and
the whole nation knows how they have comported themselves therein. And,
by a reverse process (of which the physiognomist and genealogist can give
abundant proof), the weaker members of that class which was dominant
during the Middle Age have been sinking downward, often to the rank of
mere day-labourers, and carrying downward with them--sometimes in a very
tragical and pathetic fashion--somewhat of the dignity and the refinement
which they had learnt from their ancestors.

Thus has the English nation (and as far as I can see, the Scotch
likewise) become more homogeneous than any nation of the Continent, if we
except France since the extermination of the Frankish nobility. And for
that very reason, as it seems to me, it is more fitted than any other
European nation for the exercise of equal political rights; and not to be
debarred of them by arguments drawn from countries which have been
governed--as England has not been--by a caste.

The civilisation, not of mere book-learning, but of the heart; all that
was once meant by "manners"--good breeding, high feeling, respect for
self and respect for others--are just as common (as far as I have seen)
among the hand-workers of England and Scotland, as among any other class;
the only difference is, that these qualities develop more early in the
richer classes, owing to that severe discipline of our public schools,
which makes mere lads often fit to govern, because they have learnt to
obey: while they develop later--generally not till middle age--in the
classes who have not gone through in their youth that Spartan training,
and who indeed (from a mistaken conception of liberty) would not endure
it for a day. This and other social drawbacks which are but too patent,
retard the manhood of the working classes. That it should be so, is a
wrong. For if a citizen have one right above all others to demand
anything of his country, it is that he should be educated; that whatever
capabilities he may have in him, however small, should have their fair
and full chance of development. But the cause of the wrong is not the
existence of a caste, or a privileged class, or of anything save the
plain fact, that some men will be always able to pay more for their
children's education than others; and that those children will,
inevitably, win in the struggle of life.

Meanwhile, in this fact is to be found the most weighty, if not the only
argument against manhood suffrage, which would admit many--but too many,
alas!--who are still mere boys in mind. To a reasonable household
suffrage it cannot apply. The man who (being almost certainly married,
and having children) can afford to rent a 5 pound tenement in a town, or
in the country either, has seen quite enough of life, and learnt quite
enough of it, to form a very fair judgment of the man who offers to
represent him in Parliament; because he has learnt, not merely something
of his own interest, or that of his class, but--what is infinitely more
important--the difference between the pretender and the honest man.

The causes of this state of society, which is peculiar to Britain, must
be sought far back in the ages. It would seem that the distinction
between "earl and churl" (the noble and the non-noble freeman) was
crushed out in this island by the two Norman conquests--that of the Anglo-
Saxon nobility by Sweyn and Canute; and that of the Anglo-Danish nobility
by William and his Frenchmen. Those two terrible calamities, following
each other in the short space of fifty years, seem to have welded
together, by a community of suffering, all ranks and races, at least
south of the Tweed; and when the English rose after the storm, they rose
as one homogeneous people, never to be governed again by an originally
alien race. The English nobility were, from the time of Magna Charta,
rather an official nobility, than, as in most continental countries, a
separate caste; and whatever caste tendencies had developed themselves
before the Wars of the Roses (as such are certain to do during centuries
of continued wealth and power), were crushed out by the great
revolutionary events of the next hundred years. Especially did the
discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle with Spain, the
outburst of commerce and colonisation during the reigns of Elizabeth and
James, help toward this good result. It was in vain for the Lord Oxford
of the day, sneering at Raleigh's sudden elevation, to complain that as
on the virginals, so in the State, "Jacks went up, and heads went down."
The proudest noblemen were not ashamed to have their ventures on the high
seas, and to send their younger sons trading, or buccaneering, under the
conduct of low-born men like Drake, who "would like to see the gentleman
that would not set his hand to a rope, and hale and draw with the
mariners." Thus sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe
bodily labour, which the educated class of no nation save our own has
ever felt; and which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home
or abroad. Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the
ballad sets forth) the squire's son might be a "'prentice good," and
marry

"The bailiff's daughter dear
That dwelt at Islington,"

without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the scutcheon
of his ancestors. That which has saved England from a central despotism,
such as crushed, during the eighteenth century, every nation on the
Continent, is the very same peculiarity which makes the advent of the
masses to a share in political power safe and harmless; namely, the
absence of caste, or rather (for there is sure to be a moral fact
underlying and causing every political fact) the absence of that wicked
pride which perpetuates caste; forbidding those to intermarry whom nature
and fact pronounce to be fit mates before God and man.

These views are not mine only. They have been already set forth so much
more forcibly by M. de Tocqueville, that I should have thought it
unnecessary to talk about them, were not the rhetorical phrases, "Caste,"
"Privileged Classes," "Aristocratic Exclusiveness," and such-like,
bandied about again just now, as if they represented facts. If there
remain in this kingdom any facts which correspond to those words, let
them be abolished as speedily as possible: but that such do remain was
not the opinion of the master of modern political philosophy, M. de
Tocqueville.

He expresses his surprise "that the fact which distinguishes England from
all other modern nations, and which alone can throw light on her
peculiarities, . . . has not attracted more attention, . . . and that
habit has rendered it, as it were, imperceptible to the English
themselves--that England was the only country in which the system of
caste had been not only modified, but effectually destroyed. The
nobility and the middle classes followed the same business, embraced the
same professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with
each other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman" (and this, if true of
the eighteenth century, has become far more true of the nineteenth)
"could already, without disgrace, marry a man of yesterday." . . .

"It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more
prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It would have
been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long time
past, no nobility, properly so called, have existed, if we take the word
in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained." . . .

"For several centuries the word 'gentleman'" (he might have added,
"burgess") "has altogether changed its meaning in England; and the word
'roturier' has ceased to exist. In each succeeding century it is applied
to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale" (as the "bagman" of
Pickwick has become, and has deserved to become, the "commercial
gentleman" of our day). "At length it travelled with the English to
America, where it is used to designate every citizen indiscriminately.
Its history is that of democracy itself." . . .

"If the middle classes of England, instead of making war upon the
aristocracy, have remained so intimately connected with it, it is not
especially because the aristocracy is open to all, but rather, because
its outline was indistinct, and its limit unknown: not so much because
any man might be admitted into it, as because it was impossible to say
with certainty when he took rank there: so that all who approached it
might look on themselves as belonging to it; might take part in its rule,
and derive either lustre or profit from its influence."

Just so; and therefore the middle classes of Britain, of whatever their
special political party, are conservative in the best sense of that word.

For there are not three, but only two, classes in England; namely, rich
and poor: those who live by capital (from the wealthiest landlord to the
smallest village shopkeeper); and those who live by hand-labour. Whether
the division between those two classes is increasing or not, is a very
serious question. Continued legislation in favour of the hand-labourer,
and a beneficence towards him, when in need, such as no other nation on
earth has ever shown, have done much to abolish the moral division. But
the social division has surely been increased during the last half
century, by the inevitable tendency, both in commerce and agriculture, to
employ one large capital, where several small ones would have been
employed a century ago. The large manufactory, the large shop, the large
estate, the large farm, swallows up the small ones. The yeoman, the
thrifty squatter who could work at two or three trades as well as till
his patch of moor, the hand-loom weaver, the skilled village craftsman,
have all but disappeared. The handworker, finding it more and more
difficult to invest his savings, has been more and more tempted to
squander them. To rise to the dignity of a capitalist, however small,
was growing impossible to him, till the rise of that co-operative
movement, which will do more than any social or political impulse in our
day for the safety of English society, and the loyalty of the English
working classes. And meanwhile--ere that movement shall have spread
throughout the length and breadth of the land, and have been applied, as
it surely will be some day, not only to distribution, not only to
manufacture, but to agriculture likewise--till then, the best judges of
the working men's worth must be their employers; and especially the
employers of the northern manufacturing population. What their judgment
is, is sufficiently notorious. Those who depend most on the working men,
who have the best opportunities of knowing them, trust them most
thoroughly. As long as great manufacturers stand forward as the
political sponsors of their own workmen, it behoves those who cannot have
had their experience, to consider their opinion as conclusive. As for
that "influence of the higher classes" which is said to be endangered
just now; it will exist, just as much as it deserves to exist. Any man
who is superior to the many, whether in talents, education, refinement,
wealth, or anything else, will always be able to influence a number of
men--and if he thinks it worth his while, of votes--by just and lawful
means. And as for unjust and unlawful means, let those who prefer them
keep up heart. The world will go on much as it did before; and be always
quite bad enough to allow bribery and corruption, jobbery and nepotism,
quackery and arrogance, their full influence over our home and foreign
policy. An extension of the suffrage, however wide, will not bring about
the millennium. It will merely make a large number of Englishmen
contented and loyal, instead of discontented and disloyal. It may make,
too, the educated and wealthy classes wiser by awakening a wholesome
fear--perhaps, it may be, by awakening a chivalrous emulation. It may
put the younger men of the present aristocracy upon their mettle, and
stir them up to prove that they are not in the same effete condition as
was the French noblesse in 1789. It may lead them to take the warnings
which have been addressed to them, for the last thirty years, by their
truest friends--often by kinsmen of their own. It may lead them to ask
themselves why, in a world which is governed by a just God, such great
power as is palpably theirs at present is entrusted to them, save that
they may do more work, and not less, than other men, under the penalties
pronounced against those to whom much is given, and of whom much is
required. It may lead them to discover that they are in a world where it
is not safe to sit under the tree, and let the ripe fruit drop into your
mouth; where the "competition of species" works with ruthless energy
among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones to the weeds upon
the waste; where "he that is not hammer, is sure to be anvil;" and he who
will not work, neither shall he eat. It may lead them to devote that
energy (in which they surpass so far the continental aristocracies) to
something better than outdoor amusements or indoor dilettantisms. There
are those among them who, like one section of the old French noblesse,
content themselves with mere complaints of "the revolutionary tendencies
of the age." Let them beware in time; for when the many are on the
march, the few who stand still are certain to be walked over. There are
those among them who, like another section of the French noblesse, are
ready, more generously than wisely, to throw away their own social and
political advantages, and play (for it will never be really more than
playing) at democracy. Let them, too, beware. The penknife and the axe
should respect each other; for they were wrought from the same steel: but
the penknife will not be wise in trying to fell trees. Let them accept
their own position, not in conceit and arrogance, but in fear and
trembling; and see if they cannot play the man therein, and save their
own class; and with it, much which it has needed many centuries to
accumulate and to organise, and without which no nation has yet existed
for a single century. They are no more like the old French noblesse,
than are the commercial class like the old French bourgeoisie, or the
labouring like the old French peasantry. Let them prove that fact by
their deeds during the next generation; or sink into the condition of
mere rich men, exciting, by their luxury and laziness, nothing but envy
and contempt.

Meanwhile, behind all classes and social forces--I had almost said, above
them all--stands a fourth estate, which will, ultimately, decide the form
which English society is to take: a Press as different from the literary
class of the Ancien Regime as is everything else English; and different
in this--that it is free.

The French Revolution, like every revolution (it seems to me) which has
convulsed the nations of Europe for the last eighty years, was caused
immediately--whatever may have been its more remote causes--by the
suppression of thought; or, at least, by a sense of wrong among those who
thought. A country where every man, be he fool or wise, is free to speak
that which is in him, can never suffer a revolution. The folly blows
itself off like steam, in harmless noise; the wisdom becomes part of the
general intellectual stock of the nation, and prepares men for gradual,
and therefore for harmless, change.

As long as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against sudden and
capricious folly, either from above or from below. As long as the press
is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil of persistent and
obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable shapes of tradition
and authority. For under a free press, a nation must ultimately be
guided not by a caste, not by a class, not by mere wealth, not by the
passions of a mob: but by mind; by the net result of all the common-sense
of its members; and in the present default of genius, which is un-common
sense, common-sense seems to be the only, if not the best, safeguard for
poor humanity.

1867




LECTURE I--CASTE


[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.]

These Lectures are meant to be comments on the state of France before the
French Revolution. To English society, past or present, I do not refer.
For reasons which I have set forth at length in an introductory
discourse, there never was any Ancien Regime in England.

Therefore, when the Stuarts tried to establish in England a system which
might have led to a political condition like that of the Continent, all
classes combined and exterminated them; while the course of English
society went on as before.

On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which
undermined, and at last destroyed, the Ancien Regime.

From England went forth those political theories which, transmitted from
America to France, became the principles of the French Revolution. From
England went forth the philosophy of Locke, with all its immense results.
It is noteworthy, that when Voltaire tries to persuade people, in a
certain famous passage, that philosophers do not care to trouble the
world--of the ten names to whom he does honour, seven names are English.
"It is," he says, "neither Montaigne, nor Locke, nor Boyle, nor Spinoza,
nor Hobbes, nor Lord Shaftesbury, nor Mr. Collins, nor Mr. Toland, nor
Fludd, nor Baker, who have carried the torch of discord into their
countries." It is worth notice, that not only are the majority of these
names English, but that they belong not to the latter but to the former
half of the eighteenth century; and indeed, to the latter half of the
seventeenth.

So it was with that Inductive Physical Science, which helped more than
all to break up the superstitions of the Ancien Regime, and to set man
face to face with the facts of the universe. From England, towards the
end of the seventeenth century, it was promulgated by such men as Newton,
Boyle, Sydenham, Ray, and the first founders of our Royal Society.

In England, too, arose the great religious movements of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries--and especially that of a body which I can never
mention without most deep respect--the Society of Friends. At a time
when the greater part of the Continent was sunk in spiritual sleep, these
men were reasserting doctrines concerning man, and his relation to his
Creator, which, whether or not all believe them (as I believe them) to be
founded on eternal fact, all must confess to have been of incalculable
benefit to the cause of humanity and civilisation.

From England, finally, about the middle of the eighteenth century, went
forth--promulgated by English noblemen--that freemasonry which seems to
have been the true parent of all the secret societies of Europe. Of this
curious question, more hereafter. But enough has been said to show that
England, instead of falling, at any period, into the stagnation of the
Ancien Regime, was, from the middle of the seventeenth century, in a
state of intellectual growth and ferment which communicated itself
finally to the continental nations. This is the special honour of
England; universally confessed at the time. It was to England that the
slowly-awakening nations looked, as the source of all which was noble,
true, and free, in the dawning future.

It will be seen, from what I have said, that I consider the Ancien Regime
to begin in the seventeenth century. I should date its commencement--as
far as that of anything so vague, unsystematic, indeed anarchic, can be
defined--from the end of the Thirty Years' War, and the peace of
Westphalia in 1648.