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- p. 153 - XXIV Privilege and Public Service We now come to the third of the major crimes the Aristocracy have committed against their own Order, by which, in the eyes of the gullible multitude they seemed to justify the claims of Liberalism.         It is now a very far cry from the days when a William Fitzosbern (afterwards Earl of Hereford) at his own sole risk and expense undertook the formidable task of equipping and manning several vessels in order to enable his master, William of Normandy, to take possession of England. But at bottom, his was the spirit, the Public Spirit, which animated the nobility in Feudal times and laid the original foundations of what little fast-decaying aristocratic feeling still remains here and there in the nation.         For it was the Feudal System, so much derided to day, which gathered up all that was best in the ancient world relating to the uses of Power and Property, and created an intricate and decentralised administration consisting of graduated privileges and obligations extending without a gap from the meanest serf to the presiding monarch. Nor did Disraeli exaggerate when, in Sybil, having asked, "What is the fundamental principle of the Feudal System?" he replied, "that tenure of all property shall be the performance of duties." And it is significant that even in its most decadent form it still seemed to a man like Carlyle superior to the way of life which has superseded it.         "The express nonsense of old Feudalism, even now in its dotage," he said, "is nothing to the involuntary nonsense of modern anarchy, called 'Freedom'! (Carlyle at His Zenith, by David Alec Wilson, Bk. XVI, Chap. XXII).         At all events, in its early stages, whilst there was still a vigilant and able monarch to prevent abuses, the duties of the chief or lord under the Feudal System were so heavy with responsibility that, not only were men reluctant to undertake - p. 154 - them (just as in all modern hierarchies, military, naval, or ecclesiastical, men often decline promotion out of fear of increased demands on their time and energies), but the community that urgently required leadership and authoritative administration, were often not only prepared, but also often constrained, to make substantial sacrifices in order to lure and retain suitable candidates as their local governors. Such sacrifices might consist of corvées willingly offered and punctually performed, so as to give the chosen chief the necessary leisure to discharge his administrative duties. They might also consist of good and dignified quarters which were pressed upon him not only to ensure his residence in the locality but also to afford him a lodging befitting his functions. It is even likely that sometimes the lure amounted to a guarantee of hereditary rights to his progeny.         In any case, the final outcome was an organization of the country in which privilege was always inextricably connected with duty and public service of some kind. Nor was this duty bereft of protective and tone-setting features. The ideal was to bind together all ranks of society by means of mutual obligation and loyalty; and whilst nothing in the nature of absolute, independent or emancipated individual ownership existed, the right of Private Property was nevertheless sufficiently conceded to provide for the proper development of character and sound judgment.         It is easy to see that such a close nexus, maintained between the property-owner's character and his property, supplied what was needed to ensure the Sanctity of his holding. Unfortunately, however, it is equally easy to see how simple if not natural were the many directions in which the System could be abused, defiled and disfigured. Under unwatchful presiding monarchs, or monarchs who were themselves exploiters rather than protectors of the masses, oppression and tyranny could very soon prevail over the more benevolent and humane features of the system; and where, as in England, this system was run by overlords dealing with a conquered nation, there was of course in the early days a less scrupulous exercise of justice and charity than would probably have been the case if the common people had been of the same nationality as their overlords.         At all events, the fact that ultimately Feudalism did degene- - p. 155 - rate into a state of affairs in which the privileged and powerful held and used their powers without much thought of the corresponding duties and responsibilities which originally belonged to their position, is abundantly illustrated in the whole of European history (or major part of it) up to almost the present day. The natural iniquity of Man would be enough to account for this degenerative trend. But what facilitated and expedited it was, as I shall attempt to show in the next chapter, the absence of any wise method of disciplining and controlling the superior classes of the nation. Even these very classes themselves seem not to have possessed that instinct of self-preservation which would have suggested to them some effective means of maintaining their quality so as to retain their privileges. It was the regimentation that was faulty, not the original conception of the System. And it is here that the customary practice of the Liberals always to claim a plus for every minus suffered by the aristocratic Order, is most typically displayed.         For an ideal of conduct, a programme of decent and honourable behaviour does not wilt and wither of its own accord. If it fails, its failure is due to human agencies — in this case to the deliberate sins of the aristocrats themselves against their own Order and its good name. And we have but to understand the moral contained in the etymology of our word Danger (See Chapter V ante) in order to appreciate the folly of condemning Aristocracy rather than the aristocrats themselves for the débâcle that overtook their Order and the Way of Life in a nation deprived of aristocratic leadership.

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