"NO GENTLEMAN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8959, 17 August 1892, Page 3

"NO GENTLEMAN."

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— notice in your Wellington correspondent's letter that the words "no gentleman," as applied by one M.H.R. to another, are considered as a " gross personal insult." As there seems to be in these colonies generally a very misty idea as to what the word gentleman' 1 really means, a few lines of explanation may not be out of place. 1. There is the "gentleman of coat armour," as the heralds term him. This is a man whose ancestors for at least two generations before him have been entitled to wear coat armour, or in other words, have been entitled to have ' a shield of arms. For instance, suppose, that a Mr. Smith's grandfather had received a grant of arms from the College of Arms, or in Scotland from Lyon King at Arms, Mr. Smith, being the third in descent, would be, legally, a gentleman of coat armour. Hence it is said that the King can , make a prince or a Duke, but cannot make a gentleman. 2. There are gentlemen by profession. All attorneys of the superior courts at Westminster, all writers to the Signet in Scotland, and all solicitors t» the Court of Chancery are gentlemen by profession. 3. There is a loose way in which the term is applied as meaning anyone of respectable birth, occupation, and education, who has not fallen into such a state of poverty as to be shabby in his outward apparel. In this sense a man cannot be a gentleman whose coat is out at elbows, who wears soiled linen, or whose boots are patched. This is the ordinary colonial use of the term. 4. There is the higher meaning attached to the word by some few persons, bub which

has never met with general acceptance amongst English speaking persons, which requires in a gentleman the highest sense of honour, generosity, tenderness to the weak and afflicted, and an entire absence of sordid aims and ideas. A well-known writer defines a gentleman as " one who never inflicts pain." Such characters are so rare in any rank of life, and in any country, that a man hag no more right to be offended if he is said to be "no gentleman," in this sense of the word, than he has to be if he is told that he is not as eloquent as Demosthenes, or as great a poet as Milton, or a saint. " f

The amusing point about this squabble is, that one McKenzie says that the other . Mackenzie is "no centlemanfor which their grandfathers would have fought to the death. They are both of the same clan, and both, heraldically, " gentlemen of coat armour." I may add that no degree of • poverty deprives the gentleman of coat armour of his rights or his title. What they are -worth when he is poor is another question.—l am, &c., Herald. Auckland, August 16.