all the finance, all the women of the
court, and all the bigots. It was morally impossible that the
reforms of any Turgot could have been acquiesced in by that
emasculated caste, who showed their quality a few years after his
dismissal by flying across the frontier at the first breath of
personal danger. 'When the gentlemen rejoiced so boisterously over
the fall of Turgot, their applause was blind; on that day they threw
away, and in a manner that was irreparable, the opportunity that
was offered them of being born again to political life, and changing
the state-candlestick of the royal household for the influence of a
preponderant class. The nobility, defeated on the field of feudal
privilege, would have risen again by the influence of an assembly
where they would have taken the foremost place; by defending the
interests of all, by becoming in their turn the ally of the third
estate, which had hitherto fought on the side of the kings, they
would have repaired the unbroken succession of defeats that had been
inflicted on them since Lewis the Fat.'[4] It would be easy to name
half a dozen patricians like the Duke d'Ayen, of exceptional public
spirit and capacity, but a proud order cannot at the first exigency
of a crisis change its traditional front, and abandon the maxims of
centuries in a day. As has been said more than once, the oriental
policy of the crown towards the nobles had the inevitable effect of
cutting them off from all opportunity of acquiring in experience
those habits of political wisdom which have saved the territorial
aristocracy of our own country. The English nobles in the eighteenth
century had become, what they mostly are now, men of business;
agriculturists at least as much as politicians; land agents of a
very dignified kind, with very large incomes. Sully designed to
raise a working agricultural artistocracy, and Colbert to raise a
working commercial aristocracy. But the statesman cannot create or
mould a social order at will. Perhaps one reason why the English
aristocracy became a truly agricultural body in the eighteenth
century was the circumstance that many of the great landowning
magnates were Tories, and remained sulking on their estates rather
than go to the court of the first two kings of the Hanoverian line;
just as the dependence of these two sovereigns of revolutionary
title upon the revolution families is one reason why English
liberties had time to root themselves thoroughly before t