Chapter 8

But the distinction is older than this. According to Professor Freeman it goes back well nigh to the Conquest. Not indeed the distinction of blood, for that is much older, but the formation of a separate class of gentlemen. It has been maintained however by some writers that this is rather antedating the process, and that the real distinction in English life up to the 14th century was between the nobiles, the tenants in chivalry, a very large class which included all between Earls and Franklins; and the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, the ordinary citizens and burgesses. The widely prevalent notion that a gentleman was a person who had a right to wear coat armour is apparently of recent growth, and is possibly not unconnected with the not unnatural desire of the herald's office to magnify its work.

It is evident that noble blood in those days was no more a guarantee of good character than it is in this, for, according to one of the writers on the subject, the premier gentleman of England in the early days of the 15th century was one who had served at Agincourt, but whose subsequent exploits were not perhaps the best advertisement for gentle birth. According to the public records he was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with house-breaking, wounding with intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging for his life[19].

The first gentleman, commemorated by that name on an existing monument, is John Daundelion who died in 1445.

In the 14th and 15th centuries the chief occupation of gentlemen was fighting; but later on, when law and order were more firmly established, the younger sons of good families began to enter industrial life as apprentices in the towns, and there began to grow up a new aristocracy of trade. To William Harrison, the writer to whom I have already referred, merchants are still citizens, but he adds: "They often change estate with gentlemen as gentlemen do with them by mutual conversion of the one into the other."

Since those days the name has very properly come to be connected less with blue blood than--if I may coin the phrase--with blue behaviour. In 1714, Steele lays it down in the _Tatler_ that the appellation of gentleman is never to be fixed to a man's circumstances but to his behaviour in them. And in this connexion we may recall the old story of the Monarch, said by some to be James II, who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son a gentleman: "I could make him a noble, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman."

Before we leave the class distinctions based mainly on birth and blood, it is well to remark that in England they have never counted for so much as elsewhere. It is true of course that the nobility and gentry have been a separate class, but they have been constantly recruited from below. Distinction in war or capability in peace was the qualification of scores of men upon whom the highest social rank was bestowed in reign after reign in our English history. Moreover, birth distinction has never been recognised in law, in spite of the fact that the manipulation of laws has not always been free from bias. The well known words of Macaulay are worth quoting in this connexion:

There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a peer, the younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newly made knights.

The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who could attract notice by his valour in battle.

... Good blood was indeed held in high respect: but between good blood and the privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary connection.... There was therefore here no line like that which in some other countries divides the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which his own children must descend.... Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present day, and which has produced many important moral and political effects[20].

If blood counted for much in distinctions of class, property counted for more. The original distinction between the "haves" and the "have nots" has persisted throughout history and is with us to-day.

In the ancient village, no doubt, the distinction was of the simplest. On the one hand was the man who by force or by his own energy became possessed of more cattle and more sheep than his fellows; on the other hand was the man who, in default of such property, was ready and willing to give his services to the bigger man, whether for wages, or as a condition of living in the village and sharing in the rights of the village fields and pastures. Here presumably we have the origin of that institution of Landlordism which still looms so large in our social life. In the early days it was probably more a matter of cattle than of land. The possessor of cattle in the village would hire out a certain number of them to a poorer neighbour, who would have the right to feed them on the common land. Thus, even in primitive times, a class distinction based on property began to grow up.

Early in history there was found in most villages a chief man who had the largest share of the land. Below him there would be three or four landowners of moderate importance and property. At the end of the scale were the ordinary labourers and villagers, among whom the rest of the village lands were divided as a rule on fairly equal terms.

Closely allied to this of course was the organisation of the village from the point of view of military service. Parallel to this more peaceful organisation of society was the elaborate Feudal System, by which, from the King downwards, lands were held in virtue of an obligation on the part of each class to the one above it to produce men for the wars in due proportion of numbers and equipment.

From this point of view property in land meant also property in men, labourers in peace and soldiers in war.

As time went on the class distinctions of birth and property began more and more to coincide. It was Dr Johnson who made the remark that "the English merchant is a new species of gentleman."

The form of property which was always held to be in closest connexion with gentle blood was land. This has been so in a pre-eminent degree since our English Revolution at the end of the 17th century. From that time onwards the smaller landowners, yeomen and squires with small holdings, begin to disappear and the landed gentry become practically supreme. Political power in a large measure rested with them, and the result was that numbers of men who had made money in trade were eager to use it in the purchase of land, for this meant the purchase of social and political influence.

It was no doubt this craze for the possession of land which led to the process of enclosing the common lands of the village, a process on which no true Englishman can look back in these days without shame and sorrow. It is no doubt arguable that from an economic point of view the productive power of the land was increased, that agriculture was more efficiently and scientifically managed by the comparatively few big men than it would have been by the many small men who were displaced. None the less the price was too high, for it meant a still further accentuation of class distinction. It meant the further enrichment of the big man, and the further impoverishment of the small man. And between the two there grew up a class of farmers, separate from the labourers, whose outlook on the whole did not make for those relations of neighbourliness and even kinship which had been among the fine characteristics of the ancient village.

Nor is this the end of the story, for the distinction between the "haves" and the "have nots" was still further accentuated, and the two classes driven still further apart, by the far-reaching Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century.

The alienation between the farmer and the labourer was exactly paralleled by the alienation which gradually crept in between the manufacturer and the workers. The growth of the factory system was indeed so rapid that only the keenest foresight could have provided against these evils. The same may be said of the amazing development of the towns, particularly in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, which quickly gathered round the new hives of industry. Unfortunately that foresight was lacking. On the one hand the science of town-planning had hardly been born, on the other hand a lightning accumulation of large fortunes turned the heads of the commercial magnates, dehumanised industry, and broke up the fellowship which in older and simpler days had obtained between the employer and his men.

It is a charge which we frequently bring against the enemy in these days, a charge only too well founded, that they are expert in everything except understanding human nature. The same may be said of those who were concerned in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The growing wealth of the country which should have united masters and men in a truer comradeship, and a richer life, achieved results which were precisely the opposite. It developed a greed of cash which we have not yet shaken off, and money was accumulated in the pockets of men who had had neither aptitude nor training in the art of spending it. The workers were reduced to a state not far removed from a salaried slavery, and the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" was perhaps more acute than at any other time in our history. The causes of this were many and complex. Not the least of them was the fact that the masters of industry were captured by a false theory of economics according to which the fund which was available for the remuneration of labour could not at any given time be greater or less than it was. Human agency could not increase its volume, it could only vary its distribution. And further, as every man has the right to sell his labour for what he can obtain for it, any interference between the recipients was held to be unjust.

"That theory," as Mr Hammond has told us, "became supreme in economics, and the whole movement for trade-union organisation had to fight its way against this solid superstition[21]."

The doctrine of free labour achieved a wonderful popularity; but then, as the writer I have just quoted reminds us: "Free labour had not Adam Smith's meaning: it meant the freedom of the employer to take what labour he wanted, at the price he chose and under the conditions he thought proper[22]."

More and more therefore the employers and the workers drifted apart, and the supreme misfortune was that the one power which might have drawn them together was itself in a state of semi-paralysis in regard to the corporate responsibility of the community. That power was religion. There were times, as I shall endeavour to point out later, when Christianity was able to produce an atmosphere of comradeship stronger than the differences of class. But to the very great loss of both country and Church this was not one of them.

At the moment when the corporate message of the Church was needed, it was looking the other way, and concentrating its thought on the individual. The Reformation was in large measure a revolt from the imperial to the personal conception of religion. I do not deny that this revolt was necessary and beneficial. But the reaction from the corporate aspect of Christianity went too far. When this reaction was further reinforced by the Puritan movement, which with all its strength and its fine austerity fastened its attention on the minutiae of personal conduct, and left the community as such almost out of sight, it is not surprising to find that religion at the end of the 18th, and through a large part of the 19th century, failed to produce just that sense of brotherhood which would have mitigated the whole situation and prevented much of the practical paganism which I have described.

Even the great revival connected with the name of John Wesley brought all its fire to bear on the conversion of the _man_, when the social unit which was most in need of that conversion was the community. The result of all this was that, partly owing to ignorance, partly owing to prejudice, partly owing to the misreading of the New Testament, the messengers of religion had no message of corporate responsibility for nation or class. There was no one to lift aloft the torch of human brotherhood over the dark and gloomy landscape of English life. So far from that, the people who figured large in religion were convinced quite honestly that the division of classes was a heaven sent order, with which it would be impious to interfere, and further that the main message of religion to the people at large was an authoritative injunction to good behaviour, and patient resignation to the circumstances in which Providence had placed them. The notion that the organisation of Society, particularly on its industrial side, was wholly inconsistent with the ideals of the New Testament never so much as entered their heads, and any suggestion to this effect would have been regarded not merely as revolutionary but sacrilegious.

I have ventured on this very rough description of class distinctions, before our modern days, because it is through the study of our forefathers' mistakes and a truer understanding of our forefathers' inspirations that we may hope to create a better world in the days that are coming.

II

ATTEMPTS AT SOCIAL UNITY

Let me ask your attention now to a few of the attempts which have been made to create a deeper social unity.

Some of these were naturally and inevitably developed in primitive days by the simple fact that "birds of a feather flock together."

Men engaged in pastoral pursuits gathered themselves into the tribe with its strong blood bond. The tillage of the fields led to the existence of the clan, with its family system and its elaborate organisation of the land. In the same way industrial activity produced the Guild, that is the grouping of men by crafts, a grouping which might well be revived and encouraged on a larger scale in the rearrangements of the future.

I need not remind you how large a place was occupied by the Guilds in English life. They were not Trade Unions in the modern sense, for they included both masters and men in one organisation. Nor must we attribute a modern meaning to those two phrases, masters and men, when we speak of the ancient Guild. For in a large measure every man was his own employer. He was a member of the league; he kept the rules; but he was his own master. The master did not mean the manager of the workmen, but the expert in the work. He was the master of the art in question, and though his fellows might be journeymen or apprentices, they all belonged to the same social class, and throughout the Guild there was a spirit of comradeship which was consecrated by the sanctions of religion.

For it was the Guilds which were the prime movers in organising those Miracle Plays which were the delight of the Middle Ages, and which formed the main outlet for that dramatic instinct which used to be so strong in England, and which paved the way for Shakespeare and the modern stage.

The Guild was not concerned mainly with money but with work, and still more with the skill and happiness of the worker, and its aim was to resist inequality. It was, in the pointed words of Mr Chesterton,

to ensure, not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed, but that every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers with their clothes; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the hundredth sheep; in short to keep the row of little shops unbroken like a line of battle[23].

The Guild in fact aimed at keeping each man free and happy in the possession of his little property, whereas the Trade Union aims at assembling into one company a large number of men who have little or no property at all, and who seek to redress the balance by collective action. The mediaeval Guild therefore will certainly go down to history as one of the most gallant attempts, and for the time being one of the most successful, to create a true comradeship among all who work, and to keep at a distance those mere class distinctions which, though their foundations are often so flimsy, tend to grip men as in an iron vice.

But I must not pass by another social organisation which looms very large in the old days, and which approached social unity from a side wholly different from those I have mentioned, namely from the military side: I mean the Feudal System. Here there has been much misunderstanding. Its very name seems to breathe class distinction. We have come casually and rather carelessly to identify it with the tyranny and oppression which exalted the few at the expense of the many. This point of view is however a good deal less than just. It is quite true that as worked by William the Norman and several of his successors the system became only too often an instrument of gross injustice and crass despotism; but at its best, and in its origin, it was based on the twin foundations of protection on the one hand and duty on the other. I will venture to quote a high authority in this connexion, namely Bishop Stubbs.

The Feudal System, with all its tyranny and all its faults and shortcomings, was based on the requirements of mutual help and service, and was maintained by the obligations of honour and fealty. Regular subordination, mutual obligation, social unity, were the pillars of the fabric. The whole state was one: the king represented the unity of the nation. The great barons held their estates from him, the minor nobles of the great barons, the gentry of these vassals, the poorer freemen of the gentry, the serfs themselves were not without rights and protectors as well as duties and service. Each gradation, and every man in each, owed service, fixed definite service, to the next above him, and expected and received protection and security in return. Each was bound by fealty to his immediate superior, and the oath of the one implies the pledged honour and troth of the other[24].

This system indeed was very far from perfect, but it certainly was an attempt to bind the nation together in one social unit, to provide a measure of protection for all, and to demand duties from all. It sought to lay equal stress on rights and duties. In this respect--and I am still thinking of the system at its best--it was far ahead of modern 19th century Industrialism, a system which might be described with but little exaggeration as laying sole emphasis on rights for one class and duties for the other.

But the supreme attempt which so far has been made to promote unity between classes has approached the problem from a far loftier standpoint; not industrial, nor military, but religious. And this attempt has been on a larger scale and on firmer foundations than any of the others, for it has sought to unite men in spite of their differences. It has tried, that is, to get below the varieties of race or family or occupation, and create a unity which, because it transcends them all, may hope to last. As a fact this attempt has so far surpassed all others, and has met with the greatest measure of success. And lest I should be suspected of prejudice I will quote an outside witness:

A very pregnant saying of T. H. Green was that during the whole development of man the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" has never varied, what has varied is the answer to the question--Who is my neighbour?... The influence upon the development of civilisation of the wider conception of duty and responsibility to one's fellow-men which was introduced into the world with the spread of Christianity can hardly be overestimated. The extended conception of the answer to the question Who is my neighbour? which has resulted from the characteristic doctrines of the Christian religion--a conception transcending all the claims of family, group, state, nation, people or race and even all the interests comprised in any existing order of society--has been the most powerful evolutionary force which has ever acted on society. It has tended gradually to break up the absolutisms inherited from an older civilization and to bring into being an entirely new type of social efficiency[25].

Or to take another witness equally unprejudiced, who puts the same truth more tersely still, the late Professor Lecky. "The brief record of those three short years," referring to Christ's life, "has done more to soften and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and exhortations of moralists." For a third witness we will call Mazzini. "We owe to the Church," he declared, "the idea of the unity of the human family and of the equality and emancipation of souls." That this is amply borne out by the history of the Church in early days is not difficult to prove. The unexceptionable evidence of a Pagan writer is here very much to the point. Says Lucian of the Christians:

"Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren, one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything ... affects their common interests[26]."

In the same way the ancient Christian writer Tertullian observes with characteristic irony: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. Only look, they say, 'look how they love one another[27]!'" It is not surprising that this was so when you look into the writings which form the New Testament. Apart from the words and example of the Founder of Christianity, few men have ever lived who were more alive to existing social distinctions, and also to the splendour of that scheme which transcends them all, than St Paul. In proof of this it is sufficient to point to that immortal treatise on social unity which is commonly called the Epistle to the Ephesians. In this the fundamental secret is seen to consist, not in a rigid system but in a transforming spirit working through a divine Society in which all worldly distinctions are of no account. Slavery, for instance, was, in his view, and was actually in process of time, to be abolished not by a stroke of the pen but by a change of ideal. Nor is the witness lacking in writings subsequent to the New Testament. To instance one of the earliest. In an official letter sent by the Roman Church to the Christians in Corinth towards the end of the first century, in a passage eulogising the latter community this suggestive sentence occurs: "You did everything without respect of persons."