When Lord North opposed Pitt's reform in 1785he said(4)that the Constitution was 'the work of infinite wisdom.the most beautiful fabric that had ever existed since the beginning of time.'He added that 'the bulk and weight'of the house ought to be in 'the hands of the country-gentlemen,the best and most respectable objects of the confidence of the people.'The speech,though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen,represented a genuine belief.(5)The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system.Even reformers proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the number of county-members,and a county-member was almost necessarily a country-gentleman of an exalted kind.Although the country-gentleman was very far from having all things his own way,his ideals and prejudices were in a great degree the mould to which the other politically important class conformed.There was indeed a growing jealousy between the landholders and the 'monied-men.'Bolingbroke had expressed this distrust at an earlier part of the century.But the true representative of the period was his successful rival,Walpole,a thorough country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries of finance and acquired the confidence of the city.The great merchants of London and the rising manufacturers in the country were rapidly growing in wealth and influence.The monied-men represented the most active,energetic,and growing part of the body politic.Their interests determined the direction of the national policy.The great wars of the century were undertaken in the interests of British trade.The extension of the empire in India was carried on through a great commercial company.The growth of commerce supported the sea-power which was the main factor in the development of the empire.The new industrial organisation which was arising was in later years to represent a class distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order.At present it was in a comparatively subordinate position.The squire was interested in the land and the church;the merchant thought more of commerce and was apt to be a dissenter.But the merchant,in spite of some little jealousies,admitted the claims of the country-gentleman to be his social superior and political leader.His highest ambition was to be himself admitted to the class or to secure the admission of his family.As he became rich he bought a solid mansion at Clapham or Wimbledon,and,if he made a fortune,might become lord of manors in the country.He could not as yet aspire to become himself a peer,but he might be the ancestor of peers.The son of Josiah Child,the great merchant of the seventeenth century,became Earl Tylney,and built at Wanstead one of the noblest mansions in England.His contemporary Sir Francis Child,Lord Mayor,and a founder of the Bank of England,built Osterley House,and was ancestor of the earls of Jersey and Westmoreland.The daughter of Sir John Barnard,the typical merchant of Walpole's time,married the second Lord Palmerston.Beckford,the famous Lord Mayor of Chatham's day,was father of the author of Vatheh,who married an earl's daughter and became the father of a duchess.The Barings,descendants of a German pastor,settled in England early in the century and became country-gentlemen,baronets,and peers.Cobbett,who saw them rise,reviled the stockjobbers who were buying out the old families.
But the process had begun long before his days,and meant that the heads of the new industrial system were being absorbed into the class of territorial magnates.That class represented the framework upon which both political and social power was moulded.
This implies an essential characteristic of the time.A familiar topic of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the sharp lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic privileges which,in France,provoked the revolution.In England the ruling class was not a 'survival';it had not retained privileges without discharging corresponding functions.The essence of 'self-government,'says its most learned commentator,(6)is the organic connection 'between State and society.'On the Continent,that is,powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial hierarchy,which in England were left to the class independently strong by its social position.The landholder was powerful as a product of the whole system of industrial and agricultural development;and he was bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties.How far he performed them well is another question.At least,he did whatever was done in the way of governing,and therefore did not sink into a mere excrescence or superfluity.I must try to point out certain results which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and,in particular,upon the Utilitarians.
III.Legislation and Administration
The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the lawmaking body,and the laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement.One explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah Child.(7)The laws,he said,were a heap of nonsense,compiled by a few ignorant country-gentlemen,who hardly knew how to make good laws for the government of their own families,much less for the regulation of companies and foreign commerce.He meant that the parliamentary legislation of the century was the work of amateurs,not of specialists;of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy or personal intrigue than in general principles,and not of such a centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific precision.