The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large by Francis Stuart Campbell

Author:Francis Stuart Campbell [Francis Stuart Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61016-032-2
Publisher: The Bruce Publishing Company
Published: 1943-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

III

“MATER AMERICAE”

“England, England, how I prayed for England!” — St. Vincent de Paul.

ENGLISH parliamentary government was initiated in 1215 by the Magna Charta. Seven years later the Hungarian nobility extorted from their king a similar document. Neither charter has anything to do with “democracy.”198 Neither country is a democracy in the classical sense today. In both cases we observe that privileges are granted to the First and the Second Estate and in both states trends toward semirepublican forms were apparent.*

The power of the English nobility was weakened through the War of the Roses and the subsequent centralism and absolutism of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Yet a new aristocracy arose fortified by the plunder and loot of convents and monasteries. They supplanted the old families, and the seventeenth century offers us the spectacle of a gradual retreat and decrease of monarchical power before the onslaught of a plutocratic aristocracy, determined to transform England into a republic in every respect but in name.

The Whigs were the representatives of this new independently minded, vigorous aristocracy and upper class, while the Tories standing in loyalty beside the throne were the exponents of the aulic aristocracy.199 In England alone do we encounter the phenomenon that the new moneyed class treads in the footsteps of the old, dynastic, rural, and independent aristocracy. One can therefore hardly be surprised to see the English monarchy succumbing to the assault of the Protestant moneybag in combination with the medieval, independent aristocratic spirit. It was indeed a rare and weird combination of forces which led to the retrenchment of royal power in the British Isles.*

In the centuries between the Great Charter and World War II the English aristocracy was forced to give up many important positions. Thirty years ago there was, even in connection with the reform of the House of Lords, an antiaristocratic agitation strongly expressed in the election posters, but the sentiments which were aroused in this campaign went only skin deep. Today it is practically impossible for a peer to become Prime Minister, and thus we might speak about disabilities going together with titles. England is an amazing and paradoxical country; there are, in spite of the great emphasis upon “democracy,” all indications of the existence of an aristocratic and oligarchic rule, yet this generally recognized fact caused little if any human resentment among the lower classes. There are actually a few dissatisfied, ambitious people among the middle classes who have a personal grudge against the old school tie and the reverses in the present war have made their protests appear louder than they are. It may be argued that these sentiments expressed are rather antiplutocratic than antiaristocratic. Yet the tacit and genuine, human acceptance of aristocratic or at least upper class leadership gives Britain the right to call itself a “democracy” without being one in reality. Hierarchic feelings always were very strong in England, but the extreme elasticity of the class system has always mitigated the apprehensions if aroused. Nowhere are classes more receptive to

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