Chapter 3
Rule by the few best; nobility, rank and birth as grounds of political standing.
352 passages · 116 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Aristocracy names two things the Harvard Classics keep together and keep pulling apart. In one sense it is a form of government, the rule of the few who are best. In the other it is a social order of nobility, rank and birth, in which standing descends through families and is marked by titles, arms and precedence. Rousseau counts nobility or rank among the four principal distinctions that divide mankind1, and these books take up nearly every question it raises. They ask whether rank is natural or invented, how nobilities arise, and whether blood or virtue makes a man noble. They ask what a nobility contributes to a commonwealth, and whether a free people should tolerate one at all. It is a great idea for these volumes because the same texts that describe its machinery most exactly are often the ones that question its title most sharply.
The oldest justification places rank in the order of creation. Raleigh holds that divine wisdom ordained degrees among men, kings, dukes and magistrates, as it ordained them among angels, beasts and stones2. Penn makes the same argument at length. God set subordination among men as among stars, trees and fishes, from king to scavenger3. But Penn at once turns the gift into an obligation. Great men are meant to be lights and examples to those below4, and the higher ranks are trustees of Heaven, raised above necessity so that they may serve the public5. Emerson gives the natural argument a modern and secular form. A leading class rests on original power, and the gentleman stands in his own right as Caesar or Pericles did6. Fashion is “funded talent,” the lustre of working heroes passed to their children and then challenged by new competitors from the country7. Destroy one class and another rises to the top, as cream rises in milk8. For Emerson, nobility is a natural product of any race9.
Against these stands the view that rank is a work of opinion. Pascal is its most subtle exponent. The standing of French nobility rests on imagination, not intrinsic worth10. We must honour noblemen, but not because birth is a real superiority11. Pascal wants the nobles themselves to recognize that they have nothing naturally above other men12. He distinguishes institutional greatness, which earns salutes, from natural greatness, which earns esteem, so that a duke without worth receives bows and contempt together13. To be a great lord is simply to control what others desire14. Hobbes, more bluntly, holds that hereditary marks are honourable only where they carry privileges or riches15. Herodotus had already noticed that many nations call noble those who are free from manual arts16. Pascal concedes the convention and denies the substance. Emerson affirms the substance and treats the convention as its shadow.
As a constitution, aristocracy appears more briefly. Rousseau imagines it arising when several men of equal eminence were jointly elected17. Winthrop calls the Massachusetts government a mixed aristocracy18. Adam Smith praises the orderly and parsimonious aristocracies of Venice and Amsterdam as fit to manage mercantile projects19. James Mill, by contrast, disapproved of government by the Few above all others, as an obstruction to the best wisdom in administration20.
On origins, the historians agree that nobility began in arms. Hobbes traces hereditary gentry to German lords whose scutcheons marked military virtue21, and he notes that titles which once meant command later became mere distinctions of rank22. Voltaire derives barons and peers from conquerors’ generals who divided conquered lands among themselves and then contested with their sovereigns as petty tyrants23. Yet nobility was also made by grant and by purchase. Harrison records that in Elizabethan England anyone who studied law or learning, or served in war, and could live without manual labour, might buy a coat of arms and be called a gentleman24. Carlyle insists that English kings once chose peers for merit, justice and valour25, and that the Stuarts cheapened the peerage by selling it26. Burke contrasts the Duke of Bedford’s grants, carved from confiscated ancient nobility, with his own hard-earned reward27, and he satirizes the heroic origins claimed for noble houses28. Emerson exposes the pretence of unbroken Norman descent. Lawyers, farmers and courtiers won coronets by service or favour29, and the peerage is constantly recruited from new blood30. Its founders were thieves, he says, whom only the illusion of antiquity makes respectable31. More had long before mocked nobility as descent from ancestors rich in land, worth nothing once the land is gone32. Cervantes turns the fiction into comedy, as Quixote boasts of Dulcinea’s lineage33 and promises to make Sancho an earl34.
The finished order is catalogued with care. Harrison sets out the degrees from prince to esquire35, explains hereditary succession through eldest sons36, and records that peers are tried by peers and commoners by the yeomanry37. Rank also governed taxation. Smith describes poll-taxes rated by title rather than fortune38 and a French nobility bearing the least share of the burden39. Voltaire, by contrast, notes approvingly that English nobles enjoy no exemption40. In California Dana observes an exclusive aristocracy of pure Spanish blood41, with ranks descending by quality of blood down to the pure Indian42. Andersen’s banquet, graded so that only the first rank reaches the principal feast, shows the same machinery in miniature43.
The heart of the debate is whether nobility lies in birth or in virtue. The ancients mostly take birth seriously. Menelaus reads royal lineage in his guests’ bearing, sure that no churls could beget such sons44. Tacitus reports that the Germans chose kings for the splendour of their race45. Pliny defends the custom of preferring noble birth for the senate46. The moderns who defend birth do so more guardedly. Bacon calls ancient nobility the act of time, but he allows that birth abates industry, even as nobles are born to command47. Pascal grants that birth is a great advantage, winning in eighteen years the respect others earn in fifty48. Burke asks only for some regulated preference to birth, which he judges neither unnatural nor unjust49.
The opposing chorus is larger and older than one might expect. Augustine recalls that God chose the base things of the world over the noble50. Thomas à Kempis sets nature’s boasting of high birth against grace, which values no birth without virtue51. Dante laments Romagna’s noble houses emptied of their inherited worth52, though he vaunts his own Florentine blood53. Plutarch shows Themistocles, of half-blood birth, contriving to erase the distinction between noble and base-born youths54. In Cervantes, Dorothea argues that true nobility is virtue and that few houses are free of mixed descent55. Browne finds a natural nobility without heraldry that ranks men by desert56, and Milton’s Samson places high estate in virtue rather than long descent57. Dryden58 and Pope59 agree that titles do not ennoble, and Pope adds that blood cannot ennoble sots or cowards60. Burns gives the argument its popular form: rank is but “the guinea’s stamp”61, and a prince can make a duke but not an honest man62. Burke too, defender of birth though he is, contrasts the Duke’s derivative merit with his own original merit63. In Emerson and Ruskin the argument becomes an aristocracy of mind. Emerson’s natural aristocracy lives only on the edge of the actual one64. Ruskin’s court of the great dead admits only labour and merit, where wealth and name cannot buy entry65. Lowell holds that the best blood has most iron in it66.
Pride of lineage is mostly shown in order to be judged. Dante’s Omberto scorned all men for his forefathers’ deeds67. Manzoni’s father shapes his child’s life around pride of title68, and Browning’s Thorold dotes on his interminable line of paladins69. Andersen’s Matches boast of their genealogical tree while lying in the kitchen70. Schiller resolves the quarrel dramatically. Rudenz, who had scorned peasants71, at last honours their order, which Melchthal declares older and as worthy as his own72.
Marriage is where rank presses hardest on private life. Aeschylus warns craftsmen against wedding those who boast high lineage73. Polonius tells Ophelia that Hamlet is out of her star74. In Dekker, Lincoln objects that Rose’s blood is too base, and the king answers by knighting Lacy and declaring her worthy75. Webster’s Bosola rebukes those who judge pedigrees rather than virtues76. Massinger’s Overreach seeks a title for his daughter with his wealth77, and Lord Lovell will not adulterate his blood with a commoner’s78. Here royal favour, wealth and the claim of virtue each try to bridge the barrier, with mixed success.
On the worth of a nobility to the state, Bacon offers the classic defense: nobility tempers sovereignty and adds majesty to monarchy, though too many nobles impoverish the realm79 and reduce the commons to base peasants80. Voltaire praises English noblemen who cultivate letters81. Emerson calls the lords a social church of manners and treasurers of art82, and defends feudal inequality for having bred great men83. Burke holds with Keppel that no commonwealth subsists without a hereditary nobility, whose prejudice cannot be manufactured84. He credits nobility and clergy with keeping learning alive85.
The indictment is equally weighty. Manzoni’s nobles shelter bravoes and clients beyond the law86. They use family influence to have a humble friar removed87, and they surround themselves with dependents who say “yes” until they forget “no”88. Emerson himself sees the dark side: idle barons turned brutes, and George III’s aristocracy rotten with venality89. Primogeniture, he says, coddles noble sons while the industrial arts open advantages to the middle class90. Mill condemns the predominance of noble and rich classes as demoralizing91, and he observes that an ascendant class shapes national morality to its own interests92. Channing calls contempt of labour a relic of aristocratic prejudice93. Between defense and indictment lies the doctrine of service. Ruskin reads “Lord” as maintainer of laws and “Lady” as bread-giver, so that nobility is legitimate only through service94, and the gentleman, bought by others’ sacrifice, owes duties in return95. Burke likewise holds that nobility exists by and for the other orders96.
The English and French cases receive the longest treatment. Voltaire finds the English peerage merely titular, its power confined to Parliament97. Steele warned that the Peerage Bill, by closing the peerage, would introduce an aristocracy “despotick and irresistible”98. Smith explains how nobles traded their retainers for luxuries and lost their power99. Emerson finds the English nobility open and recruited from below, as war-lords gave way to law-lords100. He thinks it secure because it lives on its estates, while the French court nobility wrung its tenants and invited revolution101. Yet he concludes that a nobility of soldiers cannot stand against merchants and manufacturers102. James Mill saw the British constitution as thoroughly aristocratic, with the Commons nominated by a few hundred families103. Burke defends the French nobles of 1789 as honourable, humane and literate104. He insists they had surrendered their privileges voluntarily105 and did not oppress their tenants106. Their abolition would be excusable, he argues, only if they had been predators like the Mamelukes107. He nonetheless admits a fatal fault: by excluding wealthy commoners from rank, they made enemies of the new rich108,109.
Politically, nobles trouble princes and commons alike. Machiavelli finds nobles few and crafty, unable to be satisfied honourably110. Their ambition must be restrained while the commons are protected111, yet they must not be driven to desperation112. Bacon adds that depressing the nobles makes a king absolute but less safe113. Marlowe’s barons rage at the upstart Gaveston raised by favour114, while Rossetti’s nobles resent a king who curbed their pride115. The struggle of the few and the many runs from Athens, where Cimon and Thucydides led the aristocratic side against Pericles116,117, to Coriolanus’s contempt for concessions to the plebs118. Aristophanes laments that Athens spurns her nobly born for base newcomers119. Froissart’s rebels deny that noble privilege has any natural ground120.
The American documents settle the matter by law, forbidding titles of nobility121,122, and Channing denies that ranks are needed for social order at all123. Even he grants that feudal rank may once have been beneficial, though he insists that age is gone124.
The question these texts leave open is the one Burke raised against the levellers themselves. A property qualification, he warned, would set up an aristocracy of the rich125. Emerson’s cream rising in milk8 makes the same point from the other side. Abolishing titles may not abolish the few. The unsettled question is whether the leading class that always forms will rest on wealth, on talent, or on the virtue that every critic of birth claimed as true nobility.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Custom and Convention 6c
See also: Custom and Convention 6c
See also: Honor 10b
See also: Family 3c
See also: National Character 3d
See also: National Character 3d · Education 9c · Liberty 7b
See also: Revolution 7a
See also: Monarchy 5b · Government 4c
See also: Democracy 5a
See also: Honor, Revolution, Democracy, Wealth, Monarchy, National Character