MENIAL DUKES AND DUCHESSES.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2176, 20 June 1890, Page 6

MENIAL DUKES AND DUCHESSES.

The great evil of the monarchy is ( <ays Frank BE. Hill in the Contemporary Review) the social flunkeyisin of which it is toe centre, the abject snobbism wiich it produces, the base servility which rxdiates from it in circles ever widening. If ' his evil wore inseparable from, it would go far to balance its polifcal advantages. Numbers of parsons real with increasing contempt and amusement the announcements of the Court Circular that the Queen or the Prinoe of Walss has ridden or walked out, ' accompanied" by this, that, or the other small German princeling, and " at^end^d" by some English nobitt op r-xilted Eiglish lady. The apparatus of L'jrds-in Waiting and Womenof-the-Bddchamber does not stir veneration. The American feeling, often pushed to limits which go beyond the require iients of a 1 'gitimate self-respect against par-i-o lal or menial service, is afficting Eoglieb sentiment. Great Dukes do not now contend which of them shall air and which of them shall put on

THE SHIRT OF THE KINO J

which shall hold the basin in which he washes his htnd3, which shall pour water on th^m, and which shall hold the towel — for one reason, because we hava no kiug. But it is pretty certain tbab w'ien the expenses of the court have to be revised the payment of a nobleman an 1 gentleman for discharging the menial fuactions about the Sovereign, or for pretending to discharge them and not doing so, will ba sharply overhauled. It is probable that by that time a feeling may have grown up which will make Jblighsh gentlemen hesitate or refuse to accept relations other than those of English gentlemen. Uoder the Eirly Bo man Emperors, the humblest Roman citizen woild have felt himaeif dishonoured at the idea of his filling a place about the person and in the household of Cso jar, in fact, the idea could not have occurred. These posits were, therefore, left often with disastrous political and social result?, to slaves and freedmen. According to Burke,

THE NATURAL TASTES OP KIMGS AND PRINCES

for low company, due perhaps to the impulse to throw off completely the restraint of ceremony, made it oxp )dient to give household pi ices to gre it nobles. Whatever the advantage of thia system, which in its time may have had its uses, the public feeling now revolts against the spectacle of Menial Dukes and Duchesses, Lord High Footman, to borrow a phrase from Mr Gilbert's last opera, and Lady Chambermaids or KitchenmaHs. Bnglisl. Eoyalty must not merely be Been in the discharge of public functions which cannot bo well be performed by any other institution. It must also be seen to be the monarchy of the whole people, and not ot the upper classes only, and must disentangle itself from those conditions which reduce English nobles and ladies to the rank of menials, acting in an ignoble farce of •• Low Life Above Stairs."