of English institutions are shared less unequally than formerly among the different classes of the community.

Popular opinion has no doubt much greater influence on the measures of government and the conduct of men in office, than during the last century. Whatever changes have been made to enlarge the political power of the people, and to relieve them from unnecessary and oppressive burdens, is to be ascribed chiefly to this cause. The privileged orders have parted with no portion of their power until they were convinced it was no longer possible to keep it. Notwithstanding these concessions to the popular demands, we think there is reason to doubt whether the aristocratic principle pervading the political and social institutions of England has been much, if at all, weakened. On the other hand, in several important respects the aristocracy appears stronger than ever.

The English government, at least ever since the revolution in 1638, has been practically an aristocracy of which the sovereign is the nominal head. Lord Brougham remarks that England is the most aristocratic nation in Europe, and a glance at English institutions will show how the aristocratic principle runs through them all.

The Reform Bill has enlarged the number of voters, and some changes have been made in favor of the popular principle in municipal corporations. But the aristocracy have the entire control of all the offices of honor and emolument in church and state, in the army and navy, at home and abroad.

The following extract from a late number of the Edinburgh Review presents a striking, and probably, so far as it goes, a just view of the political and social state of England.

"To a superficial glance at the condition of our own country, nothing can seem more unlike any tendency to equality of condition. The inequalities of property are apparently greater than in any former period of history. Nearly all the land is parcelled out in great estates among comparatively few families; and it is not the large but the small properties which are in process of extinction. An hereditary and titled nobility, more potent by their vast possessions than by their social precedency, are constitutionally and really one of the great powers in the state. To form part of their order is what every ambitious man aspires to as the crowning glory of a successful career. The passion for equality, of which M. de Tocqueville speaks almost as if it were the great fever of modern times, is hardly known in this country, even by name. On the contrary, all ranks seem to have a passion for

inequality. The hopes of every person are directed to rising in the world, not to pulling the world down to him. The greatest enemy of the political conduct of the House of Lords submits to their superiority of rank as he would to the ordinances of nature, and often thinks any amount of toil and watching repaid by a nod of recognition from one of their number."*

In the army, the officers are taken from the nobility and gentry with hardly an exception. Commissions are generally obtained by purchase, and sometimes by the gift of the commander-in-chief. The price is beyond the ability of any but the rich, and rarely has any officer risen from the ranks. Should a rich parvenu take a fancy to a military life and buy a commission, woe to the unlucky wight. His treatment from the other officers would soon make him glad to sell or to resign a place where he is considered an intruder. The officers of the navy are generally taken from the same class.

The pay and prize-money in the army and navy are graduated on the same aristocratic scale. At the capture of Havana, in 1762, the distribution of the prize-money was as follows. Admiral Pococke commanding the naval forces had for his share upwards of £122,000; the captains, £1,600; lieutenants, £234; petty officers, £17; sailors and marines between three and four pounds. Lord Albemarle, commander of the land forces, had the same as the Admiral; the field of 8d. ficers, £564; captains, £164; private soldiers, £4, 18, There was, however, much complaint that this distribution was not exactly conformable to the former practice. The distribution of the prize money to the English army at the capture of Paris after the battle of Waterloo was made by proclamation at London, and was probably agreeable to the established rules of the service.

To the Duke of Wellington, £61,000
General Officers,

Field Officers,

1,274

10s. 10d.

433

4 4

90

7

3

Sergeants, Corporals, &c.

Private Soldiers,

This is the partnership of the giant and the dwarf. The

*Edinburgh Review, No. CXLV.

commander gets all the honor and profits, the soldier the losses and blows. This is apt to be the case in all wars; and party contests are too often the "madness of many for the gain of a few."

The proportion between the pay of the officers and soldiers in the armies of the ancient republics, compared with the practice in all modern nations, is very curious.

When Xenophon, after the retreat of the ten thousand, engaged himself and six thousand of the Greek army in the service of a Thracian prince, the terms of pay were, to each soldier, one daric a month; each captain, two darics; and to Zenophon, the general and commander, four darics.

Among the Romans, Polybius says the pay of a centurion was only double that of a private soldier.

It appears from Demosthenes, that the pay of an Athenian ambassador in his time was not more than that of a common soldier.

The annual income of the Lord Chancellor of England was formerly as much as £20,000, and besides he had many lucrative offices at his disposal. We believe it has been reduced by the Whig government to £14,000, with a retiring pension of £5,000. The salaries of the Judges are from £5,500 to £10,000 a-year. We do not mention these instances of salaries as extravagant, under the existing circumstances. They are probably not higher than is required by the nature of the government, and the state of English society.

In the church the bishops, archbishops, and other dignitaries, enjoy very ample revenues, from one or two thousand to twenty thousand pounds a-year. These, with some excep tions, are given to the relatives of the nobility and gentry, younger brothers and cousins. The majority of the clergy seem sufficiently removed from the temptations of wealth. In about five thousand parishes, a few years since, there was no resident clergyman, and the religious services were performed, as far as they were performed at all, by curates. Of this portion of the clergy the compensation varies from ten to a hundred pounds annually, in few instances exceeding the latter sum.

The bishops often amass large fortunes. Bishop Tomline, the private tutor of the late William Pitt, was said to have left an estate of £700,000, and we not unfrequently hear of a dignitary of the church in England, and especially in Ireland, leaving at his decease from one to several hundred thou

sand pounds. The late reform of the church has introduced a greater equality in the salaries of the bishops and archbishops, varying from £4,500 to £20,000.

In respect to the church, however, we have no idea that any attempt to abolish or diminish tithes would be of any service to the tenants, or afford any relief to the people in general. The whole benefit would go to the landlords. There is much reason in the sentiment of Burke, that a Bishop of Durham or Winchester may as well have £10,000 a-year as an earl or a squire, although it may be true that so many dogs and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to nourish the children of the poor people. In the reformation of the church by Henry the Eighth, the confiscation of a greater part of the church property served only to enrich the crown and a few greedy courtiers. The estates of several among the most wealthy of the nobility and gentry in England, it is well known, were derived from the plunder of the abbeys, monasteries, and convents. Such an origin of a great estate as the Duke of Bedford's, so eloquently described by Burke, in his "Letter to a noble Lord," is not peculiar to the Russell family.

The rich plunder expected from the great wealth of the church was no doubt one of the main causes of the reformation in England, so far as relates to Henry the Eighth and his courtiers, especially the latter. The motive assigned by the poet Gray, with much wit as well as gallantry, for the conduct of the great reformer of the church, was the primary, but not the only one.

""T was love that taught this monarch to be wise,

And gospel light first beamed from Bullen's eyes."

Henry's love for the property of the rich abbeys and monasteries proved far more lasting than his affection for Anne Bullen, and his reforms were continued long after the unfortu nate queen ceased to influence her imperious husband.

The lucrative civil offices are shared by the aristocracy and their dependents, except in a few instances where extraordinary skill or industry is required, and which must be had wherever they can be found.

The mercantile, manufacturing, and moneyed interests have long had great influence in the policy and measures of the British government. Though the representatives of these classes have always been in number a minority in parliament, yet

from their superior activity and sagacity with regard to their own interest, they have frequently obtained undue advantages from the government, and are, on the whole, much more favored in the public burdens than the agriculturists. The rich merchants, manufacturers, and bankers may be considered either as members, or as allies and supporters of the aristocracy.

The House of Lords is now far superior to that assembly, when, about eighty years ago, it was called by Lord Chesterfield the Hospital of Incurables. This is owing chiefly to continual recruits of the most distinguished commoners, who have, since the accession of George the Third, tripled the number of the Upper House. In point of talent, wealth, personal influence, and weight of character, it probably stands much higher than at any former period. Take from the House of Lords the families that have been ennobled during the last sixty years, and though its legal and constitutional power would be the same, its real power and influence would be comparatively insignificant.

These continual accessions from the ranks of the commons are the vivifying principle of the nobility, giving it health, strength, wealth, talent, and influence. The leading commoners, the most distinguished men in political life, in the law, army, navy, and church, and in the landed, moneyed, commercial, and manufacturing interests, do not wish to diminish the power or privileges of an assembly of which they may hope to be one day members, and which, at any rate, they consider as indispensable to the continuance of the present political system.

One of the best founded complaints against the English government is the neglect to provide for the education of the common people. No public provision is made for this object, at least none worth mentioning, except so far as it may be supposed to come within the duties required by law, or custom from the clergy of the established church. While so much is doing in Prussia and several other countries on the continent at the public expense, though much has been said and written in England in favor of a general system of education, we hardly recollect any measure of the government for this purpose except the grant a few years since of £30,000 for the education of teachers.

It may be supposed of course that the same neglect would extend to the English colonies and dependencies, or whatever