Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/482

460 PEERAGE Doctrine of the en nobling of blood. Peerage hinders nobility. parliament. The peerage of the temporal lord came to be looked on as something inherent in the blood, something which could not, like the official seat of the churchman, be resigned or lost by any means except by such legal pro cesses as involved "corruption of blood." The parlia mentary powers, the formal precedence, of the spiritual lords were not touched, but the idea silently grew that they were not the peers of the hereditary members of the House. In short, the doctrine grew that the temporal lords alone were peers, as alone having their blood " ennobled," which is the herald s way of saying that they held their seats by hereditary right. The extinction of so many temporal peerages in the Wars of the Roses, the creation of so many new peerages under the Tudors, while in one way they lowered the strength and dignity of the order, in another way helped more and more to mark it out as a separate order, distinct from all others. But the spiritual lords were not the only class that lost by the growth of the doctrine of hereditary peerage. No doctrine about blood or peerage could get rid of the fact that the parliamentary position of the bishops and the greater abbots was as old as that of the earls, far older than that of the barons, to say nothing of the ranks more lately devised. But there was another body of men whom the growth of the hereditary doctrine hindered from be coming peers, and from becoming lords of parliament in any full sense. These were the judges. As the judges grew to be a distinct and recognized class, they came to be sum moned to parliament like the barons. The same reason which made it expedient to summon bishops, earls, and barons, made it expedient to summon judges also. It would not have been unreasonable if, in the many shiftings and experiments which took place before the constitution of the two Houses finally settled itself, the judges had come to hold official seats in the House of Lords in the same way as the bishops. But the growth and strengthening of the hereditary doctrine hindered the judges as a body from ever winning the same position in parliament as the bishops and abbots. They had not the same antiquity ; they had not the same territorial position ; their tenure was less secure ; the spiritual lord might lose his office by resigna tion or by a legal process ; the judge might lose his by the mere arbitrary will of the sovereign. The bishops then could be denied the right of personal peerage ; they could not be denied their full parliamentary position, their seats and votes. But the same feeling which deprived the bishop of his personal peerage hindered the judge from ever obtaining the personal peerage, and even from obtain ing a full seat and vote in parliament. Owing to these influences, the judges have ever held an anomalous position in parliament ; they came to be in a manner in the House of Lords but not of it, to be its counsellors and assessors, but not its members. The growth of the hereditary doctrine pressed hardly, we must allow, on both bishops and judges. But its working on either of those classes has been of small moment indeed compared with the effect on the nation at large. There is no institution for which England has greater reason to be thankful than for her hereditary peerage ; for, as we began by saying, it has saved her from the curse of a nobility. Or rather, to speak more accurately, the growth of the peerage with its comparatively harmless privileges hindered the real nobility from keeping or winning privileges which would have been anything but harmless. If the word nobility has any real meaning, it must, according to the analogy of lands where there is a real nobility, take in all who bear coat-armour by good right (see NOBILITY). It is a remark which has been made a thousand times, and no remark can be truer, that countless families which would be reckoned as noble any where else are not reckoned as noble in England. That is to say, though they may be rich and ancient, though they may claim an illustrious pedigree and may be able to prove their claim, yet they have nothing to do with the peerage. In England no family is looked upon as noble unless its head is a peer. In other words, the idea of peerage has altogether displaced the older idea of nobility. The growth of the order of peers has hindered the growth of any nobility apart from the peerage. The hereditary dignity of the peer, the great political position which it carries with it, stands so immeasurably above any hereditary dignity which attaches to the simple gentleman by coat- armour, that the gentleman by coat-armour the noble of other lands ceased in England to be looked on, or rather perhaps never came to be looked on, as noble at all. In other words, the growth of the peerage saved the country from the curse of a nobility after the fashion of the nobility of France or of Germany. The difference in this respect between England and other lands is plain at first sight, and there really seems no other way to explain the differ ence except that every notion of hereditary dignity and privilege gathered so exclusively round the hereditary peerage as to leave nothing of any account to gather round any smaller hereditary position. But, while the growth of the peerage thus hindered the growth of a nobility of which every gentleman should be a member, it was still possible that a real nobility might have grown up out of the peerage itself. That is to say, it might have come about that, while none but the descend ants of peers were privileged, all the descendants of peers should be privileged. A nobility might thus have been formed, much smaller than a nobility taking in all lawful bearers of coat-armour, but still a nobility by no means small. But in England no such nobility has ever grown up. No one has any substantial privilege except the peer himself. No one in short is noble but the peer himself. Even in common speech, though we speak of a noble family, we do not personally apply the word noble to any other member of that family, unless, in the case of the higher ranks of the peerage, to a few immediate descendants of the peer. In short, while the blood of the peer is said to be ennobled, it is ennobled with a nobility so high and rare that it cannot pass to more than one at a time even of his own descendants (see the plain speaking of Dr Stubbs, Const. Hist., iii. 443). The eldest son of a duke is legally a commoner ; the children of his younger sons are not only legally but socially undistinguishable from other commoners. That is to say, the hereditary possession of the peer is not nobility at all in the sense which that word bears in other lands. It is a fiction to say that the peer s blood is ennobled, when the inheritors of his blood are not inheritors of his nobility. In short, as there is no nobility outside the families whose heads are peers, neither is there any real nobility within those families. As the growth of the hereditary peerage made nobility impossible outside the families of peers, so the particular form of its growth made true nobility impossible even within those families. For, after all, the essence of peerage is simply that the peer becomes by birth what other men become either by royal nomination or by popu lar election. The official origin of the peer still cleaves to him. The best description of his position is that he holds a great hereditary office. His place as legislator and judge is in itself as strictly official as the dignity of the bishop or the sheriff; but, as, unlike the dignity of the bishop and the sheriff, it has become hereditary, something of the magic sentiment of hereditary descent has spread itself over its actual holder and over a few of his immediate descendants. But, as the dignity is in itself official, the hereditary sentiment has not been able to go further than