BRITISH BRAHMINS AND PARIAHS.
SOME half hundred gentlemen in France are slowly undergoing the process of being made Peers, in batches of four or five at a time ; and in a recent batch appear Victor Hugo, the celebrated author, and M. Bertin de Vaux, proprietor of the Journal des Debate, the leading journal of Paris : whereupon the Morning Chronicle moralizes- " Strange promotions these appear in our free country, where it would be some- thing absurd to fancy Viscount Thomas Moore or Earl William Wordsworth assuming the coronet and ermine; or Mr. Walter taking his seat in the House of Lords, or the chief of the Post or the Herald, after supporting the Government worthily at his printing-office in Shoe Lane in the morning, going down to sup- port it by his vote at Westminster in the evening,j cheek by owl with other nkle Peers there. Now fancy what would F. M. the Duke of Wellington say to find a comrade in the editor of the Morning Post! • • • He would say, You a Lord! I hardly consider you to be a man. I scarcely consider you worthy of the semblance of politeness or the common decencies of language. If you make an incorrect state-nent about me, I Five you the lie. Begone I Give me no more trouble, and tell me no more lies. This is the gist of F. M.'s note, published in our Saturday's paper. The Post fancies the F. M. is sick, and says so. The F. M. says the statement is wilfully false'; and requests the editor be pleased to take care that no more falsehoods ' are told concerning him. The F. M.'s gracious letter runs through all the newspapers, and is taken up by the press with a sort of glee.* There is no remonstrance made, no protest against the F. M.'s words, that they are grossly insulting; that no man, not even a newspaper editor, is to be actused of a lie lightly; that no F. M., however famous his name, great his age, or testy his disposition, has a right to use this kind of language towards men pretending to decency of character: not a word is heard of remon- strance against this outrage, and it is passed over as if it was the usual and proper style of intercourse between great people and the press. • • • And, to be sure, what right have we to complain, when the victim himself bears his punishment with such a charming meekness? We think,' says the Post, 'his Grace has been rather too hard upon us in attributing wilful misrepre- sentation. Who would wilfully misrepresent his Grace's health ?—we, for our part, wish him to be in life as he is in fame, IMMORTAL!' It certainly is rather hard,' because you are mistaken about an old gentleman's health, to be accused of propagating wilful falsehoods. The language is rather hard, and the bearing it, we should have thought, harder still: but no; what right to the courtesies of life, or to the privileges of feeling, have men belonging to the English press? What right have they to aspire to a decent social rank, or to demand a common civil treatment ?"
Our contemporary forgets the provocation : it is very annoy- ing, when you are quite well, to have your house besieged by fussy inquirers speaking of you as moribund ; still more unplea- sant is it to be followed by a crowd on the next day, wondering at you as if you were a live ghost. But fussy "gentlemen of the press" seem to think that their connexion ought to be a spass- port to all places at all times—not excepting- even the tete-a-tete of a Royal couple in rural retirement. In fact, the press helps to draw down upon itself some contempt for its pandering to the lower kinds of gossip. A newspaper is a thing from which no kind of "rumour," however frivolous, mischievous, or dis- gusting, is excluded ; because rumours are gossip, the English people love gossip, and it is worth so much a sheet. The aro- nick says, that such a note as the Duke of Wellington's addressed' to a French paper, by the Duke of Dalmatia for instance, would have excited quite a different feeling in the French press and that the peccant Peer would have been worried into better beha- viour. May be so - but, on the other hand, the French jour- nals do not lay themselves quite so open to reproach on the score of vulgar gossip as ours do. News they have, no doubt, of the baser as well as the higher kinds, criminal as well as political news ; but it is not put forth with all the odious elaboration and prominence that it is in ours. We talk of the inferior "morals" of our neighbours but what in the artistical and analytical Mys- teries of Paris could be half so noxious as the naked exposure.of the revolting and contaminating mysteries of London laid bare, with foul minuteness and silly unconsciousness of the filth, in the reports of the great St. Giles 's murder? The Duke of Welling- ton is a man who sees such truths as come Within the scope of his vision with unmistakeable distinctness : his natural eyesight, as through a telescope, takes in but a small field, yet straightforward is as keen as an eagle's: he saw here nothing but the bad gos- siping part of English journalism ; it happened to offend him per- sonally, and he rebuked it accordingly.
But there are other reasons why the Duke should have been more tartly received in France. It is our own fault if our nobles treat us with this excessive arrogance : they do but reflect the servility with which the English people worship titles ; a species of idolatry not under the ban of "Protestantism." In France there is less of this prostrate adoration. A title there may even be more coveted by all the world, but when got it is thought less of. It is, what our neighbours seem to relish more than we, a personal adornment--something that imparts a more striking effect to the attitude of the wearer—a feather in his cap as he struts the stage of life : but it is not much more. A real peer does not command vastly more respect than a mimic peer at the theatre ; the chief difference is, that his honours are permanent.
With us there is scarcely any bound to our reverence. Prac- tically, a title outweighs every other consideration. A man may be the veriest vagabond about town—the plaything ofjockies and courtesans, a wrencher of knockers, a dabbler in equivocal bill- discountings ; but if he is a lord, there is charity for his errors from all, a smile of indulgence on the judgment-seat, a wel- come in the Royal mansion. Is there a fool at a meeting of the wise, and that fool with the tag of " Lord" before his name, he becomes the leader for the nonce : "letters four do form his fame," and he is made president over his betters. We treat our nobles as if they were a sacred race, incapable of doing wrong. Even while we censure, we court ; as much as to say, that though the sinner may be wrong for a lord and as compared with lords, still he is more blessed than common men. Is it wonderful that we are repaid by the extraordinary arrogance which is so conspicuous in British Peers, Hindu Brahmins, and other consecrated races ? The greater the worship the more despotic the pride. Perhaps even in England, the Mike would not have rebuked a blunder in the "rough and ready" Times with such audacity of calcitration.
It is the old fable of the boy who bit off his mother's ear at the gallows. We, the British people, have made these arrogancies, and they bite us. The Sovereign is said to be the fountain of honour, and is so in the individual gift of title ;. but it is our re- ception that gives the title its value ; and here is our payment. Let us not bow down quite so idolatrously before lords_, and lords will not ride over us like holy Mussulraans at the feast of the Doseh. If we will lay ourselves before the horse's feet, let us not cry out because our bones are bruised.
* There is too much truth in this. The Port has absolved itself by manfully admitting the blunder; which was, after all, not so very great III the present la- stance, but it is one of a troublesome class. .
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