in office until Gladstone's third term as Prime Minister in 1886. It was during the period from 1832 to 1867, a period of pronounced Whig or Liberal ascendancy, that, in Lecky's judgment, England was best governed; this, he considered, was due chiefly to the limited middle-class franchise, that was the law of the land in those years.

The fact that the great Liberal historian selects as the happiest a period when the franchise was still carefully restricted, proves that the tradition of the Liberal party was not radical, but, on the contrary, definitely aristocratic. It was the great "Houses" -the Spencers, the Russells, the Grenvilles, the Cavendishes, and others—who were the solid foundation of the Whig ascendancy in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, although there was a powerful Radical wing, the Whig party was scarcely less aristocratic than in the eighteenth; the Greys, the Spencers, the Lambtons, the Russells continued to give steady support, while powerful reinforcements came from the great Scottish houses of Elgin and Argyle.

It must not be thought that the Whigs ever had a monopoly of the aristocratic connection. The Tories, down to the first Reform Act, were pre-eminently the party of the squires-of the landed interest. Moreover (fortunately for England) neither party was the party of a class: the division between the parties was vertical, not horizontal; and each party contained a "crosssection" of the whole people. But the Whigs had the larger number of the "great houses"; and, as Liberals, they maintained this aristocratic connection, along with a growing radical connection, down to the end of the century, and indeed, down to the Great War.

After the year 1886, however, the aristocratic connection of the Liberals weakened. The Liberal historian, Herbert Paul, notes in his "History of Modern England," that many noblemen, of whom the best-known was Lord Hartington, could not go with Gladstone along the road of Home Rule for Ireland. Yet although the secession of the Liberal Unionists in 1886 withdrew a substantial number of the Liberal aristocrats, it by no means exhausted the aristocratic connection. After all, the Liberal ministry of 1894 had the Earl of Rosebery for Prime Minister, and a member of the ancient Norman House of Harcourt as leader of the House of Commons. Yet the aristocratic interest

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was declining in the Liberal ranks. The first volume of Lord Oxford and Asquith's memoirs contains allusions to many powerful Liberal peers-Ripon, Clarendon, Kimberley, and others; the second volume has not so many. Still, the Whig aristocratic connection remained to the end; but now, with the decline of the Liberal party, it has almost passed entirely away.

And with this disappearance, the influence of society upon politics, as a whole, has been markedly diminished. The Conservatives always had, always will have, a due share of aristocratic or high social connection; but the Labour party has at present little or none of it. Yet it is not a good thing for a nation that one of its most educated and public-spirited elements should be removed from political influence. When the aristocracy supplied members to both parties, it was respected by the nation as a whole and had due influence. If it becomes a monopoly of one party only, it will naturally come under suspicion of the rest of the people.

In a remarkable letter to Queen Victoria regarding the treaty of guarantee of Luxembourg in 1867, Disraeli wrote: "The House of Commons, the City of London, and Society generally, were in favour of peace at the price of the general guarantee.' Society was, at any rate, one-if not the chief-of the deciding factors in politics. Disraeli's letter was written before the second Reform Bill passed into law. But the influence of society did not pass away with the extension of the franchise. Lord Salisbury had a contempt for what he called "club land." He did not think that governments were made and unmade in Pall Mall or St. James's Street. But he did not disregard the influence of the large number of families who, by reason of birth and wealth, were all deeply in the movement of political life. Accordingly he regarded Lady Salisbury's receptions as important. It is true that he did not set much store by dinner-parties" the long, pompous dinner-parties of those days, with their brain-racking strain of small-talk, their bad air and their unwholesome food."

On the other hand, the massed political receptions over which his wife presided for so many years were accepted as forming part of the business of life, and, though they tried him physically, were felt to be comparatively innocuous in the small demand which they made upon his mental energies. He was always interested in their success and had views of his own as to its conditions. A vivid brilliancy in lighting and a fearless prodigality in invitations were the two prescriptions

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upon which he insisted. . . . He was an admirable host on these occasions. The touch of epigram and of finished phrasing, which came naturally to him, made him peculiarly happy in the brief interchanges of civility which were appropriate, and the courtesy with which he greeted his guests was unfailing, though rendered a trifle impersonal by his constant incapacity to identify them.*

The influence of society upon politics was noticeable, not merely on the Conservative side. Lady Palmerston's evening receptions were, in her time, more important in political life than were those of Lord Derby. Henry Adams, who was private secretary to his father, the famous American visitor to the Court of St. James's, disliked going into society, but he attended Lady Palmerston's receptions because "everyone went there." By everyone," this philosophical and observant American meant everybody who was of any weight in politics. Who were these everybodies?" They were, of course, Society. The Liberal party, at any rate in Lord Palmerston's time, had to reckon with Society just as much as did the Conservatives. Lord Granville, President of the Council and Foreign Secretary under Mr. Gladstone, was (even if the Prime Minister was not) careful of his relations with Society. A Philadelphia journalist described him at Lady Granville's receptions, moving among the guests, courteous, affable, pleasing, attentive, absorbing much but divulging nothing, "like a Foreign Office sponge." If Society, on the whole, has come to support the Conservative point of view, this was not so in the 'seventies, or early 'eighties. It was the Home Rule Bill of 1886 which lost the Liberal party a great deal of its support in Society; most of the Whig aristocrats withdrew with the Duke of Devonshire, unable to follow Mr. Gladstone "against the traditions of British statesmanship."

What is this Society about which we read so much in those many-volumed biographies of British statesmen, with their copious extracts from journals and letters, rendering the study of nineteenth-century history so fruitful and fascinating? Vague as its outline is in many respects, geographically it is not difficult to define. It lived within the rectangle of Mayfair, bounded by Bond Street and Park Lane, Oxford Street and Piccadilly, with some notable outlying residences around Whitehall, in Chelsea, Kensington, or on the Bedford and Portland estates; for although

*Lady G. Cecil, “Life of Salisbury," II. 6, 7.

a fashionable old lady told Lord Salisbury, when as a young politician he first set up in married life in Fitzroy Square, that "she never left cards north of Oxford Street," the leaders of political salons were too wise to practise exclusiveness to such a degree.

Yet this Society, although it can be fairly accurately located in that district of London of which the "Running Footman is the centre, was by no means just a London society. In fact, London was only an incident in its life. It concentrated itself " in Town "" for "the Season"; but when the season was not going on, or at any rate, when parliament was not sitting, the families who made up Society were at their "homes in the country; in London they only had a "town house." Lady Salisbury's political receptions were at the old Cecil house in Arlington Street. Lord Derby drew up his list of Cabinet Ministers in St. James's Square; Lady Granville "received" in Bruton Street; Lady Palmerston at Cambridge House, Piccadilly; but all these people" lived " in the country, the Salisbury family at Hatfield, the Derby family at Knowsley; Palmerston's house was Broadlands, in Hampshire; only Lord Granville had no estate of his own. Lord Palmerston rectified this, however, by securing him Walmer Castle for life. The letter in which the offer of this was conveyed, shows how the Whig leaders looked out upon life: "As you have no place on the sea, perhaps you would like to be Warden of the Cinque Ports. The salary is nil, and the expense something."

Society, then, was not simply a number of exclusive families who dined incessantly with each other during the season in London, and who discussed politics, oblivious of the rising and massive forces that were beginning to move the country outside. Society itself was in and of the country. It was a landowningclass; and if a younger son rose to eminence and "founded family " he would at least make a home in the country, even if he could not become a landowner on the large scale which that term usually implied. Thus Society was not really rooted in London, although, with unerring economy of power, it united to apply pressure at the point where the seat of government is. Its roots were in the counties; it was their country-homes that filled the memories of boyhood before the sons went to Eton and Harrow; and it was the country-home that filled the

daughters' memories of all the years of their life until they" came out" in the London season, and married and adopted another country-home. If the United Kingdom had a governing-class in those days it was a class which was not merely drawn from but which actually lived in every county of the land.

It was not simply England that supplied the families of society. This was the least national of aristocracies. British it was to the core, but it had no separatist jealousies. The Dufferins and the Argylls, the great Irish and Scottish peers and landowners, so powerful on their own estates, so respected in their own country, were as naturally members of Society as were the aristocracy of England. They had houses in London, and went regularly there for the season. They sent their sons to Eton, Oxford and Cambridge, or into the navy and army; although in their native land they figured as heads of clans, in London they were indistinguishable-in manner, accent, social habit and general political outlook-from the other families which made up Society.

And lastly, this Society was not a closed body. England, said Edmund Burke, in contrasting it with France, has an aristocracy, not a noblesse. He meant that the governing class in England was always recruiting itself; it consisted not merely of hereditary noblemen, but of younger sons of nobles, of untitled families (many of them as old and honourable as the peerage) and of any new men whose talents had assured them sufficient political influence and wealth to make them "count" in Society. The remarkable Peel family was an addition to the governing class made by the Industrial Revolution. Every year of the nineteenth century saw the rise to wealth and influence of some man who had prospered in the commercial or industrial world. Nor was great wealth itself necessary, although considerable means were always indispensable if a man was to take part in the life of Society. There are well-known middle-class families who have an assured position in Society by reason of their services to the public in successive generations. Disraeli, democrat as in a true sense he was, yet perhaps more than any other statesman of the nineteenth century, saw and valued the connection of Society and politics; and he was received into the great fellowship without having the advantage of birth or wealth.

At first, indeed, the young Disraeli was outside the pale. After his time as a law-clerk, and after his interesting travels on the