An Englishman desires, above all, to live largely; on that account he not
only dreads, but hates and despises, poverty. His virtues are those of
the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the
sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches
in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most
part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position.



XXII.


For a nation of this temper, the movement towards democracy is fraught
with peculiar dangers. Profoundly aristocratic in his sympathies, the
Englishman has always seen in the patrician class not merely a social,
but a moral, superiority; the man of blue blood was to him a living
representative of those potencies and virtues which made his ideal of the
worthy life. Very significant is the cordial alliance from old time
between nobles and people; free, proud homage on one side answering to
gallant championship on the other; both classes working together in the
cause of liberty. However great the sacrifices of the common folk for
the maintenance of aristocratic power and splendour, they were gladly
made; this was the Englishman's religion, his inborn _pietas_; in the
depths of the dullest soul moved a perception of the ethic meaning
attached to lordship. Your Lord was the privileged being endowed by
descent with generous instincts, and possessed of means to show them
forth in act. A poor noble was a contradiction in terms; if such a
person existed, he could only be spoken of with wondering sadness, as
though he were the victim of some freak of nature. The Lord was
Honourable, Right Honourable; his acts, his words virtually constituted