GENTLEMANLY PROFESSIONS. [From the 'Saturday Review.']

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1377, 22 February 1861, Page 5

GENTLEMANLY PROFESSIONS. [From the 'Saturday Review.']

We are all of us sufferers under the tyranny of gentility. From iihe moment we begin to dress in the morning till we retire agaia at night, we never escape from its sway. It haunts us as we eat and as we walk, it peers into our dressing-rooms and spies out all our daily habits. It puts chimney pots on our heads, and coats o£ quaint and uncoutli cut on our backs, lanks omnibuses as unholy things, and sets before us as the object of our ambition the glory of being aeived by powdered louts arrayed in gay court dresses. But, being a patient people, we sutler all these little tyrannies gladly, especially as they give us the pleasure of an occasional laugh at our neighbours when they fail to come up to the requned standard. But when gentility steps out of its small domain and_ attempts to govern the greater things of life, the society of the nineteenth century resists. It used to force a man who had been insulted to stand up and be shot at by the m»n who had insulted him. But for some time past the English world has abandoned this mediseval absurdity to the enlightened and advanced democracy of the West. Time was when it insisted that marriages should be a sort of heraldic partnership, in which each side was to bring an equal number of inches of pedigree into the common stock, and a 'mSsalhance' was looked upon as something considerably more dishonourable than an adultery. But in recent times the common sense of the community, except, of course, in the agricultural counties, where that faculty is languid, has adopted the more sordid view that the comfort and happiness of the persons immediately concerned ought to be principally consulted. But there id one department of human action over which gentility still exercises a pernicious remnant of its old usurped dominion. There are still such things as gentlemanly professions ; and, therefore, by an inevitable consequeuce, there is a great and growing mass of gentlemanly poverty. There is a large section of the educated portion of the community with whom tho precepts of gentility are a religious obligation, a law of the Medes and Persian's which altereth not. They are maiked off by no distinot line of rank, or property, or manner, or refinement, or even of pohtioal opinion, for many advanced Whigs will be found among their number. Intellect seems to be the only quality incompatible with then 1 faith. Like some of the Hindoo sects, they worship a Goddess of Evil, whose name is Mis. Grrundy, and strive to propitiate her by ascetic and self-torturing observances of the 'convenances' and the 'bienseances.' They live in this world m a constant fear of losing caste, and look forwaul to tho next with some apprehension lest tho society should .be.mixed. It is one of the fundamental piecepta, of their goddess that their sons shall be brought up

*? a &s& sa ®* an * in ;" which olastic word is further limited by the gloss that they shall serve no one except the yijeen or the Chmch ; or, if they aro to receive payment for work done horn anybody else (a practice at which the strictest professors of the sect look askance), it must'be as banisters or doctors. If any' one of them steps beyond this line, and becomes a mci chant, or a farmer, or a clerk in any bnt a Government office, ho is held to have degraded himself, and incurs the full penalty denounced by their iehgion against backsliders ; a penalty so awful that none of them can ever be induced particularly to describe it, but which appears to consist principally in being looked down upon by the scot. This was all very woU in the good old days of jobbing, when theie was a berth for everybody and everybody for Ins berth. In those days, the magic ciiele ot gentility was very limited, and the condition of the law and of the government made the horizon of genteel prospects veiy wide. Everything went by favour, and theief ore everything was got by begging. To push your son was a polite euphemism which meant to beg for mm. But there weie plums in those days, real plums, which weie worth a good deal of begging and ■a good deal of dirt-eating, and which satisfied the hungriest when they weie shaken down at last. Unhappily, the evil days have come upon us since then. Ihe magic cuole has infimtely widened, the spods provided for the sustenance of those whom it includes havo become infinitely scantier. The ' ' gentlemanly professions are in a gieat measuie occupied by aspuants pressing in fiom without, who aigue that because the "caste" fiequent them, therefore they will constitute an admission to the "caste," an object which people value just as they value ugly green china, because it is not in eveiybody's power to possess it. The result is, that gentility is beginning to be sorely pressed to satisfy the vulgar necessity of hying. The gentlemanly labom -market is glutted. The supply of well-dressed young gontlemen looking ' tor work is constantly in excess of the demand foi theu valuable services, and the artificial stimulus pievents the inequality fiom rectifying itself. Gentlemanly employments are becoming more and moio overstocked, and less and less lemunerative. Gloomier and gloomier is the prospect that rises befoie the needy English hidalgo with five promising sons to dispose of. England indeed is gi owing incalculably richer ; but her wealth is, duo to inanufactmes, and colonies, and commeice, and it is m these that they who would share in it must work. Veiy little of that wealth reaches the devout believer in gentlemanly professions. All his pasture giounds are diymg up year by year. Success in the law is both raier and less lucrative than it was and what remains of it is leserved as a maimge portion for the sons-m-law of attorneys. The newspapers are filled with the wails of the starving clergy, unable to live without help, and forbidden by law to help themselves. Iheie aie still prizes m the Church, no doubt; but there is no system of promotion by which a man without personal or party interest can even hope to attain a competence. There is nothing in this woild so desolate as the prospects of a curate who has neither party leader nor rich patron to befriend him, m other words, of at least one-half of those who yearly resort to the Chuich as a means of livelihood. They be<nn at eighty pounds a-year ; and an advertisement for a cm-ate on this salary will bring in a score of applications. Then their usual course is to niarry and beget nine children; and the ultimate goal of their ambition is a Peel district of a hundred and fifty pounds a-year. The daughters become the drudge governesses at ten shillings a-week, the sons would piobably be only too thankful for the cleiksmp which their father disdained as a loss of caste. We do not of course speak of the minority, who take orders from a higher motive than self -maintenance. This class of minds would probably look upon the wife and nine chddren as unnecessary adjuncts until they could support them. The navy is scarcely a more cheerful prospect for the poor wretch who has not interest to push him on. A station m the Bight of Benin, a broken constitution, and a lieutenant's halfpay is the reward to which hundreds have been conducted by the boyish desire of wearing epaulets. Of course, the navy has moie to oiler m tune of war A lucky captain may make a small fortune out of prizes and if he fails, he may at least comfort himself with such solace as patriotic reflections can afford. But the broken-hearted, threadbaie, halfpay officer, who may be met with in almost every country town in England, has known veiy little of war. The army is wholly beside the question, because it is now admitted to be a pastime for the rich and a sustenance for the poor. It is notorious that a man cannot live upon his pay, and if he could, he must buy the privilege of doing so at a puce larger than the pay is woith. If a manTias only £6,000 he had far" better invest it in Rupee five per cents, than m buying the steps up to a colonelcy. Of diplomacy it is also needless to say much. It is only the higher grades that aie toleiably paid ; and while in some embassies, such as St. Petersburg, it is a well-understood thing that the salaiy is not adequate to the expenses ; m others a Minister can only save by exposing himself to constant dispaiagement, for inhospitahty and stinginess. s Tlie Government and the Church aie not to blame for the scanty pittances with which they secuie for their seivice the best talents and eneigy of the country. Likepiudent cmployeis, they lefuse to rave higher pay than the state of the labom maiket exacts. So long as theie aie hundieds of foolish youus men willing to enter upon a desolate life and a hopeless caieer,and to esteem themselves adequately paid by that aibitrary seal of respectability which 1 costs nothing to the giver and in no way benefits the receiver, so long they would be equally foolish if "they offered higher terms. But the system is far from working weU, though they cannot be held responsible for its defects. Compelled by the phantom of gentility, the men enduieto go on with all the miseries of a career which promises them nothing ; but they are not contented. The patnarchal but staivmg curate, the despairing lieutenant in an unwholesome station, the grey-headed Government clerk who has risen by giadual piomotion to the pinnacle of thiee hundred pounds a-year, have all had eaily friends who weie less trammelled by geutihty, and who m colonial or commeicial life, have gi own fat upon thenfreedom. They forget that their pay has been according to contiact, supplemented with the rations of gentility for which they baigained, for their eaily illusions as to its value have have piobably been modified ; and they vent their wiath at the disheaitemng contiast m bitter maledictions against the ingratitude of their coiuitiy. These guunbleis do not make efficient servants. They are apt to look on their engagement as a Shylock's covenant, and not to give .1 diop of service beyond what is wntten m the bond ; and the cleverer and the moie ambitious they aie, the bitterer their discontent at finding that what they call their devotion to their country has distanced them in the race of life. It is one of the evils of the new system of competition, that this class of malecontents is likely to increase rather than diminish. The dulness that used to reign in Government offices was thick-skinned and complacent, and penetrated to the last with a thankful conviction of its own intense respectability. With so much of conscious dignity to rewaul them, the older race of clerks were patient of scanty salaries ; but this delusion is not likely to prevad with the sharper wits whom the competitive examinations are bringing into the offices. The gentility superstition will drive even clever lads into the dismal caieer of a Government clerkship ; but it will hardly, when they are middleaged men, comfort them for what they have done. Of course, all this discontent would be removed if a healthier feeling prevailed as to the choice of an occupation. If professions weie selected without any regard to the caste they would confer, no one would be satisfied with Government pay as it is now, either in the oivil or military services. It would no doubt be an acute suffering to Mr. Gladstone to be obh«ed to raise his Estimates ; but the nation would be the gainer. The Exchequer might suffer for a tune from the necessity of gi eater liberality, but a heartier and more genuine service would moie than make up the loss.