Oppression by optimism
But we are not here concerned with the nature and existence of the aristocracy, but
with the origin of its peculiar power, why is it the last of the true oligarchies of
Europe; and why does there seem no very immediate prospect of our seeing the end of
it? The explanation is simple though it remains strangely unnoticed.
The friends of
aristocracy often praise it for preserving ancient and gracious traditions. The enemies
of aristocracy often blame it for clinging to cruel or antiquated customs. Both its
enemies and its friends are wrong. Generally speaking the aristocracy does not
preserve either good or bad traditions; it does not preserve anything except game.
Who would dream of looking among aristocrats anywhere for an old custom? One
might as well look for an old costume!
The god of the aristocrats is not tradition, but
fashion, which is the opposite of tradition. If you wanted to find an old-world
Norwegian head-dress, would you look for it in the Scandinavian Smart Set? No; the
aristocrats never have customs; at the best they have habits, like the animals. Only the
mob has customs.
The real power of the English aristocrats has lain in exactly the opposite of tradition.
The simple key to the power of our upper classes is this: that they have always kept
carefully on the side of what is called Progress. They have always been up to date,
and this comes quite easy to an aristocracy. For the aristocracy are the supreme
instances of that frame of mind of which we spoke just now.
Novelty is to them a
luxury verging on a necessity. They, above all, are so bored with the past and with the
present, that they gape, with a horrible hunger, for the future.
But whatever else the great lords forgot they never forgot that it was their business to
stand for the new things, for whatever was being most talked about among university
dons or fussy financiers. Thus they were on the side of the Reformation against the
Church, of the Whigs against the Stuarts, of the Baconian science against the old
philosophy, of the manufacturing system against the operatives, and (to-day) of the
increased power of the State against the old-fashioned individualists. In short, the rich
are always modern; it is their business. But the immediate effect of this fact upon the
question we are studying is somewhat singular.
In each of the separate holes or quandaries in which the ordinary Englishman has been
placed, he has been told that his situation is, for some particular reason, all for the
best. He woke up one fine morning and discovered that the public things, which for
eight hundred years he had used at once as inns and sanctuaries, had all been suddenly
and savagely abolished, to increase the private wealth of about six or seven men. One
would think he might have been annoyed at that; in many places he was, and was put
down by the soldiery. But it was not merely the army that kelp him quiet. He was kept
quiet by the sages as well as the soldiers;
the six or seven men who took away the inns
of the poor told him that they were not doing it for themselves, but for the religion of
the future, the great dawn of Protestantism and truth. So whenever a seventeenth
century noble was caught pulling down a peasant's fence and stealing his field, the
noble pointed excitedly at the face of Charles I or James II (which at that moment,
perhaps, wore a cross expression) and thus diverted the simple peasant's attention.
The great Puritan lords created the Commonwealth, and destroyed the common land.
They saved their poorer countrymen from the disgrace of paying Ship Money, by
taking from them the plow money and spade money which they were doubtless too
weak to guard. A fine old English rhyme has immortalized this easy aristocratic habit
- You prosecute the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But
leave the larger felon loose Who steals the common from the goose.
But here, as in the case of the monasteries, we confront the strange problem of
submission. If they stole the common from the goose, one can only say that he was a
great goose to stand it. The truth is that they reasoned with the goose; they explained
to him that all this was needed to get the Stuart fox over seas. So
in the nineteenth
century the great nobles who became mine-owners and railway directors earnestly
assured everybody that they did not do this from preference, but owing to a newly
discovered Economic Law. So the prosperous politicians of our own generation
introduce bills to prevent poor mothers from going about with their own babies; or
they calmly forbid their tenants to drink beer in public inns. But this insolence is not
(as you would suppose) howled at by everybody as outrageous feudalism. It is gently
rebuked as Socialism.
For an aristocracy is always progressive; it is a form of going
the pace. Their parties grow later and later at night; for they are trying to live tomorrow.
Re: Anomalies in The Ruiner's material
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(Though I know you meant this as a joke.)
... hope it wasn't too "Distracting" 
!!!
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