Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
the Horse Guards, or for Lord Kinsale's right of wearing his hat in the
royal presence--reckon off the petty discount for privileges so purely
ceremonial, and absolute nothing remains to distinguish the nobility.
For as to the practice of entails, the legal benefit of primogeniture,
&c., these have no more essential connexion with the nobility, than the
possession of land or manorial rights. They are privileges attached to a
known situation, which is open equally to every man not disqualified as
an alien. Consequently, we infer that, the fusion and continuity of our
ranks being perfect, it is not possible to suppose, with respect to a
great patriotic interest, any abrupt pause in the fluent circulation of
our national sympathies. We, therefore, cannot be supposed to arrogate
for the nobility any separate privilege of patriotism. But still we
venture to affirm, that, if the total numbers of our nobility and their
nearest connexions were summed; and if from that sum were subtracted all
officers, being brothers, sons, nephews, of British peers, who laid down
their lives, or suffered incurable wounds in the naval or military
service of their country, the proportion will be found greater than that
upon the aggregate remainder belonging to the rest of the nation. Life
is the same blessing for all ranks alike. But certainly, though for all
it is intrinsically the same priceless jewel, there is in the setting of
this jewel something more radiantly brilliant to him who inherits a
place amongst the British nobility, than to him whose prospects have
been clouded originally by the doubts and fears of poverty. And, at all
events, the libation of blood in the course of the last war was, we must
repeat, on the part of the high aristocracy, disproportionately large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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