e time of Magna Charta,
rather an official nobility, than, as in most continental countries, a
separate caste; and whatever caste tendencies had developed themselves
before the Wars of the Roses (as such are certain to do during centuries
of continued wealth and power), were crushed out by the great
revolutionary events of the next hundred years. Especially did the
discovery of the New World, the maritime struggle with Spain, the
outburst of commerce and colonisation during the reigns of Elizabeth and
James, help toward this good result. It was in vain for the Lord Oxford
of the day, sneering at Raleigh's sudden elevation, to complain that as
on the virginals, so in the State, "Jacks went up, and heads went down."
The proudest noblemen were not ashamed to have their ventures on the high
seas, and to send their younger sons trading, or buccaneering, under the
conduct of low-born men like Drake, who "would like to see the gentleman
that would not set his hand to a rope, and hale and draw with the
mariners." Thus sprang up that respect for, even fondness for, severe
bodily labour, which the educated class of no nation save our own has
ever felt; and which has stood them in such good stead, whether at home
or abroad. Thus, too, sprang up the system of society by which (as the
ballad sets forth) the squire's son might be a "'prentice good," and
marry

"The bailiff's daughter dear
That dwelt at Islington,"

without tarnishing, as he would have done on the Continent, the scutcheon
of his ancestors. That which has saved England from a central despotism,
such as crushed, during the eighteenth century, every nation on the
Continent, is the very same peculiarity which makes the advent of the
masses to a share in political power safe and harmless; namely, the
absence of caste, or rather (for there is sure to be a moral fact
underlying and causing every political fact) the absence of that wicked
pride which perpetuates caste; forbidding those to intermarry whom nature
and fact pronounce to be fit mates before God and man.

These views are not mine only. They have been already set forth so much
more forcibly by M. de Tocqueville, that I should have thought it
unnecessary to talk about them, were not the rhetorical phrases, "Caste,"
"Privileged Classes," "Aristocratic Exclusiveness," and such-like,
bandied about again just now, as if they represented facts. If there
remain in this kingdom any facts which correspond to