BURKE'S COLONIAL GENTRY."
WHEN some toady attempted to cajole grim old Lord Chancellor Thurlow by a pedigree showing his descent from Cromwell's famous Secretary (who was also a Suffolk man), he gruffly responded :—" Sir, there were two Thurlows in that part of the country who flourished about the same time : Thurloe the Secretary, and Thurloe the carrier. I am descended from the latter." Here spoke the spirit of that sturdy, self-made lawyer, who, when reproached with his plebeian origin by the Duke of Grafton, told that nobleman and the assembled Peers of England, that in "that character alone in which the noble Duke would think it an affront to be considered—as a man—I am as much respected as the proudest Peer I now look down upon."
But alas ! Thurlow's is not the spirit of Sir Bernard Burke, nor, it would appear, of many of his Australian and Canadian correspondents and clients who have furnished forth these two goodly volumes of pedigrees and coats-of-arms. Thackeray, in his famous Snob Papers, dubs Burke's Parage "The British Bible " ; but we rather fear that many English votaries of that work will be inclined somewhat angrily to regard these additional volumes as a kind of spurious gospels ! Many of the names, and here and there certain of the genealogies, will surely have an odd sound to that diligent or vain class, who busy themselves overmuch with questions of family trees and lists of landed gentry.
Dickens has, it is tree, made us all familiar with "Brooks of Sbeffi-o.d.; " but in a work of th1/4 class it reads somewhat odd to come upon (say) "Brown of Toronto," or "Jones of Brisbane." Nay ! Sir Bernard, or his editor, Mr. Ashworth P. Burke, goes even further than this in this strange way of marking out the Colonial gentry from the commonalty ; for he designates a man of family by the fancy name of his or its suburban dwelling-house—as who should say, Brown of " Fair- view " Hammersmith, or Jones of "Gladstone Villa" Clapham ! This strikes one as an ultra-refinement of the old Scottish or French custom of bestowing a territorial title on the strength of the purchase of a quarter-of-an-acre field. These colonial designations are not based on landed possessions so much as on the mere occupancy of a suburban villa.
At the same time we are not of those who would altogether condemn or ridicule such a publication. Lord Sherbrooke was fond of saying that all "knowledge, except heraldry, had its uses ; " we fail to understand why he should have made the exception. False heraldry, no doubt, is worse than useless; but a really good county history, or even an exhaustive and authentic account of one old county family, is in itself a useful fragment of English history. What we do not like about Sir Bernard Burke's latest attempt in this direction is the too palpable aping of English practices by a few successful Colonists. It is all of a piece with the nomenclature of their wines and other products, which must perforce masquerade under European designations. Surely the very reason and origin of a Colony, is that of a land where men and women should make a "new start,"—where families should be founded. True, in the vast and constant outflow of people from our crowded shores to the Colonies and America, many younger sons of good English families have always accompanied their more plebeian fellow-country- men. In some cases these scions of English houses have established themselves successfully in the new lands; but LI most instances they have been among the "submerged." Gould our Colonial kinsman, therefore, in responding to Sir Bernard Burke's tempting invitation to furnish him with genealogies, have overcome the innate snobbery of our race, such a work on "Colonial Gentry" might be eminently suggestive and even valuable to the future historian. We should then see side by side how far the offshoots of the "old families" had held their own in the new lands with the novi homines ; how far it is the descendants of Thurloe the carrier,
and how far the descendants of Tharloe the Secretary, who are building up the wider Englauds across the seas. Unfortunately, a cursory glance at this book shows any one at all familiar with the annals of the Colonies, that this innate British snobbery has made the work almost useless, and in many respects a laughing-stock. As such it is sure to be regarded in the Colonies themselves. What would the ordinary English- man think were he to encounter in a gorgeously got-up work
• A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry. By Sir Bert:1ml Burke, 0.B., LL.D., Ulster King of Arms. 2 vols. London: Harrison and Bona
on our landed gentry the name of a more or less popular low- comedian, with the fancy designation of his suburban residence tagged on as a kind of territorial title, and a pedigree as long as the Laird of Cockpen's The consequences of this method of compilation are not difficult to realise. Mixed with a sprinkling of fairly well- known Anglo-Colonial families—such as the Molesworths and Stephens—we come upon numbers of more or less prosperous or well-known Colonists (unless their prosperity have already vanished, while the book was going through the press, in the recent bank failures), living in decent suburban houses, who can have no more claim to the distinction of "gentry," in the English sense of the word, than the average resident of a crowded London suburb. To scrutinise these genealogies would in most cases be a profitless task ; in some a painful one. To give the volume a still further semblance to the "British Bible" of Thackeray, the various English Governors of these Colonies are made to figure with their well-known pedigrees and coats-of-arms, simply transferred from Sir Bernard Burke's Peerage or Landed Gentry. On what. principle, we would like to ask Mr. Ashworth Burke, does the Scottish Earl of Hopetoun appear in one of these pre- tentious and portentous volumes of Colonial Gentry ? The answer can only be that for the last five or six years he has been Governor of Victoria,—a principle which would place Lord Dufferin among the French gentry, if he be not already monopolised by our Canadian or Indian fellow-subjects.
In conclusion, we can only regret that the spirit of old Lord Chancellor Thrirlow is not more prevalent among our so-called democratic Colonial kinsmen. Had it been, we might now have in our hands a really valuable historic work, which should show us the actual stock and veritable origin of the men who are building the Empire of Oceana. Instead of this, we have pages of doubtful pedigrees and profitless in- formation concerning commonplace British families settled in Australia, Canada, and South Africa ; while the very names of dozens of notable men are ignored, who have not only raised themselves to positions of social importance, but have been among our veritable "nation-builders." What adds to the irony of the thing is that some of these who are thus put aside to make room for local nonentities are men of not undistinguished lineage. It would, of course, be invidious to mention instances of such gross blundering ; and doubtless with regard to the omission of many distinguished and well- born Colonists the fault rests rather with themselves than with the compiler of this book. The best men are never fond of mixed company. But when, coupled with dozens of such omissions, we find the pages of these two huge volumes so greatly occupied with the family histories of men concerning whom no one except themselves can feel the slightest interest, we are constrained to utter our protest, vain and belated as it must be.
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