| | | | It is curious that amongst all their profusion of intelligence | the newspapers of Cardiff have omitted one little episode in | the reception of Lord Bute which has somehow or other | made its way into a London journal. Among the various | novelties of the occasion appeared a learned goat, whose | cleverness consisted in its ability to single out from the | alphabet the four letters which make up the title of the | Marquis, and to select from a heap of numerals the figures | 300,000. It is possible that Welsh journalism thought the | poor animal too insignificant to be mentioned in such a | blaze of illuminations and triumphal arches, or the story | may simply be a parable in which some ingenious | humourist drew the moral of the whole affair. But, fact or | fiction, the parable is a very neat and telling one, and | admirably fitted, now that the crackers and the bonfires are | over, to set people thinking over the exact significance of | these doings at Cardiff. At first sight they are a very simple | matter. There are few occasions on which one is less | inclined to be critical than on a

"coming of age";

| in fact any pleasant display of cordiality between | employers and employed, or landlord or tenant, has an air | of sheer good humour about it which exempts it from | criticism. But the people of Cardiff are far from content to | stand on such a simple, spontaneous footing of welcome as | this, or to greet Lord Bute as, say, his Scotch tenants | greeted him; on the contrary, they seem to have resolutely | determined to overdo the thing, and they have overdone it | with a vengeance. To a man of somewhat cynical humour | we can hardly conceive any pleasanter reading than a | perusal of the local newspapers for the past week. | Whatever value there may be in the speculations of Bishop | Butler on the possibility of a nation going mad, there seems | to lurk in the sober and respectable British tradesman an | irresistible propensity to spasmodic outbursts of moral | intoxication which outdo all speculation whatever. In | moments of this sort there is an absolute indifference as to | the object of enthusiasm, or as to any fitness or propriety in | the language in which that enthusiasm is conveyed. It is a | little difficult to believe that the thousands who applauded | the hymn of adoration which was offered up to the Sultan | at the Crystal Palace meant quite all the profanity which | their words conveyed. But is it possible that the feelings of | the Bishop of Llandall, the High Sheriff of Glamorgan, and | the magistrates of Cardiff are accurately expressed by the | following verses? | | As far as the facts go, however, the prose is quite equal to | the poetry. Nothing but the strangely composite personality | of the chief mover on the occasion, who seems to represent | in himself a Volunteer Colonel, a manager of iron-works, a | High-Sheriff, and an eminent archaeologist, can at all | convey a notion of the muddle of jubilation. For a whole | week grave magistrates and graver clergymen have been | organizing addresses and regattas and fire-works and | balloon ascents. In their wake some fifty thousand people | have been roasting oxen, dining, dancing, singing, firing | salutes, riding in procession, rowing in regattas, drilling in | reviews, and holloaing themselves hoarse with shouting |

"Bute."

In a word, one of our greatest | commercial centres has flung itself with a supreme | recklessness into the whirl of the silly season. It is pleasant | to find that in all this chaos of absurdity one person at least | has shown nothing but modesty and good sense. Lord | Bute's replies to the fulsome addresses of Bishops and | Oddfellows are not only thoughtful and temperate, but | distinguished by a real nobility of tone and purpose which | lifts them at once out of the atmosphere of ridicule around | them. It is impossible for | anyone who reads his quiet | manly words not to feel that one man stood in all those | excited crowds resolute to understand his duty, and to do it. | But it is just this moderation and good sense in the hero of | the occasion that brings out into crueler relief the | absurdities of his reception; nor is it quite certain that the | quiet way in which Lord Bute sets all this enthusiasm aside, | and goes at once to business, was not intended as a hint that | the understood the meaning of this marvelous

"love" |

for a young nobleman whom not five of the shouters | had ever set eyes on before. | No-one grudges a glass of good | port to the city capitalist whose pockets are about to be | unbuttoned, and the thriftiest lover will stand an outing to | Richmond in honour of the heiress whose thousands he | destines for his own. It is possible that Lord Bute saw | something of the same spirit of thrifty prodigality in the | demonstrative affection, the triumphal arches, the salutes, | and the roast oxen of the good city of Cardiff. The adroit | hints which take the form of compliments in successive | addresses remind us rather unromantically that, in the midst | of festivity, it is as well to keep an eye on business, and that | many a good bargain has been struck when the customer | was at his third bottle. Whatever blame they may have | incurred from outsiders for their grant of 500 pounds, the | Town Council of Cardiff were perfectly aware that, even in | crackers and roman-candles, they could lay out their money | to good commercial advantage. And so, while Lord Bute | listened to the compliments of the clergy, they may have | taken to his ear the form of new appeals for churches and | schools, and the shouts of Cardiff may have sounded like a | cry for fresh docks. The town welcomed not a mere | Marquis, but a rich one, and the thought of his rentroll | seems to have blended itself indissolubly with the thought | of him in the minds of its citizens. In other words, The Goat | which had spelt out the letters of "Bute" had learnt also to | spell out the numerals "300,000." | We are far, however, from thinking this the one motive of | these Welsh festivities, or the one lesson taught by the | parable of the Goat. Both illustrate admirably the new | relation of English nobility to the classes with whom | nobility is elsewhere most in conflict. If Robert Fitz-Ilamo | could revisit his own barony of Glamorgan he would hardly | look upon the traders of Cardiff as other than the natural | foes of his order. In every country of the continent the same | feeling still exists, and the noblesse regards | itself as the hereditary and natural opponent of the | bourgeoisie. The Faubourg St. Germain sulked under | a Citizen King. The patriciate of Austria rejoiced in the | overthrow of Schmerling. And of course the aversion is | returned with interest. There is probably no English cry so | absolutely unintelligible to the shopkeeper of Vienna or | Paris or Madrid, as the cry of the English shopkeeper,

| "Thank god, we have a House of Lords!"

And yet in | the mouth of the latter it is a perfectly genuine and natural | cry. It is absurd to regard it as merely the result of snobbery | and flunkeyism. The truth is not merely that the | middle-classes of England have for the last thirty years felt | themselves masters of the political position, and therefore | have ceased to dread the influence of the peerage even were | it essentially opposed to their own, but that they are | conscious that no such opposition exists. The want of any | legal recognition of noble blood has in this country | prevented the creation of a class of noblesse | such as arose elsewhere. Revolutions destroyed the | continuity of the peerage; the baronial houses of the | Conquest had passed away in the days of Henry the | Second; the baronage of the Plantagenets was wrecked in | the wars of the Roses. The new nobility of the Tudors and | the Stuarts was drawn from the middle-classes ~~ from the | Squirearchy, from chance favourites, from the shop and the | counter. The banker of the Revolution of 1688, the | contractor of the French wars, sits equals by the side of the | Stuarts and the Stanleys. The peerage, in short has become | a Legion of Honour for the middle-classes. The common | phrase that the house of Lords is open to all-comers whom | wealth or ability can bring there, ridiculous if it is | addressed to the great masses of the people, is perfectly | true so far as the mercantile and shopkeeping classes are | concerned. They are proud of an assembly whose doors | they see opening every day to comers from Lombard Street | and Lincoln's Inn ~~ to the speculator who comes to | London as a pig-driver, or to the barrister who has thanked | them for a brief. But there is a social reason for their pride | in the House of Lords which is even stronger than the | political one. The real worship of the middle-classes is a | worship of hard cash; and it has been the good fortune of | the English nobility to afford it admirable objects for | worship. Probably the one peer who strictly as a peer, is | best known among the shopkeepers of England, is the | Marquis of Westminster. There is something that glorifies | the till in the thought of a thousand a-day. But there are a | score of Dukes and Earls and Marquises who, each in their | own range, afford the same opportunity of idolatry. Wealth | is a distinction which the middle-class recognizes within its | own bounds, and by which it sorts itself into its different | degrees; and the higher rank of a class supremely wealthy | has in it nothing to offend, but, on the contrary, everything | to flatter it. The Goat only echoed the real feelings of the | people of Cardiff when he coupled their enthusiasm for a | peer with the fact that the peer had 300,000 pounds a year. | But the case of Lord Bute illustrates a yet stronger tie that | binds the nobility to the trading-classes. It is that in | England alone many of the greatest houses in the peerage | are traders. In any part of the world, of course, a mine may | be opened on the estate of a noble, or flocks as countless as | those of Prince Esterhuzy may graze on his lands; but we | do not recall any other country which can afford parallels to | such instances as those of the Duke of Bridgewater and the | first Marquis of Bute ~~ men who deliberately sacrificed | half the comforts and dignity of life to plan and carry out | great industrial and commercial enterprises as capitalists on | their own account. Cardiff is the simple creation of one | man's energy and wealth. At the opening of the century it | was a mere Welsh village, with a population of little more | than a thousand souls. Methyr was a place far up in the hills | to which men travelled, Alpine fashion, on mules, and from | which they brought down coals in sacks slung across the | backs of ponies. Cardiff is now a town of 50,000 souls, and | one of the most thriving commercial ports in Britain, just | because a great peer, its landlord, chose to dig docks and | build railways, and sink over a million in creating it. | Miracles such as this, miracles wrought by sheer weight of | hard cash, are the poetry of | | The life of the middle-classes. They like to keep peers who | can put a million into the ground. Their own little hoard, | their own tiny speculation, is glorified by the thought of | these immense accumulations of capital, of these enormous | investments of wealth. I was, we fear, a

"loyalty"

| rather to the money-bag than to the man, a

"love"

| rather of hard cash than of the Marquis, which found its | jubilant expression in the welcome which Cardiff gave to | Lord Bute.