tic intolerance has not
prevented the development of religious liberty, because the lower
classes were not strictly bound by the customs of the nobility and
gentry. The unwritten law appears to be that members of an aristocracy
shall conform either to what is actually the State Church or to what has
been the State Church at some former period of the national history.
Although England is a Protestant country, an English gentleman does not
lose caste when he joins the Roman Catholic communion; but he loses
caste when he becomes a Dissenter. The influence of this caste-law in
keeping the upper classes within the Churches of England and of Rome has
no doubt been very considerable, but its influence on the nation
generally has been incomparably less considerable than that of some
equally decided social rule in the entire mind of a democracy. Had this
rule of conformity to the religion of the State been that of the English
democracy, religious liberty would have been extinguished throughout the
length and breadth of England. I say that the customs and convictions of
a democracy are more dangerous to intellectual liberty than those of an
aristocracy, because, in matters of custom, the gentry rule only within
their own park-palings, whereas the people, when power resides with
them, rule wherever the breezes blow. A democracy that dislikes
refinement and good manners can drive men of culture into solitude, and
make morbid hermits of the very persons who ought to be the lights and
leaders of humanity. It can cut short the traditions of good-breeding,
the traditions of polite learning, the traditions of thoughtful
leisure, and reduce the various national types of character to one
type, that of the _commis-voyageur_. All men of refined sentiment in
modern France lament the want of elevation in the _bourgeoisie_. They
read nothing, they learn nothing, they think of nothing but money and
the satisfaction of their appetites. There are exceptions, of course,
but the tone of the class is mean and low, and devoid of natural dignity
or noble aspiration. Their ignorance passes belief, and is accompanied
by an absolute self-satisfaction. "La fin de la bourgeoisie," says an
eminent French author, "commence parcequ'elle a les sentiments de la
populace. Je ne vois pas qu'elle lise d'autres journaux, qu'elle se
regale d'une musique differente, qu'elle ait des plaisirs plus eleves.
Chez l'une comme chez l'autre, c'est le meme amour de l'argent, le