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Title: The English Middle-Class, September 29, 1854 (1854)
Description: Leading article of the New-York Daily Tribune on the first signs of political independence of the English middle class towards the aristocracy in the Aberdeen coalition ministry.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1854-09-29
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1854%20The%20English%20Middle-Class%2C%20September%2029%2C%201854
---


*Published unsigned as a leading article, under the headline “The English Middle-Class”, in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 4196, September 29, 1854, p. 4, cols. 4-5; MEGA² (I/13) prints it among the writings of doubtful authorship (Dubiosa); it is not in the MEW. It follows the leading article “The English Middle Class” of August 1, 1854; the date is added to the title to tell them apart. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1854%20La%20clase%20media%20inglesa%2C%2029%20de%20septiembre%20de%201854).*

The whole system of Class Government in Britain hinges upon the political subserviency of the middle-class to the aristocracy. The middle-class have the power, and lack only the will, to take a political position befitting their influence in the State; but to do so would involve the overthrow of Class Government, and necessarily bring about considerable changes in the time-honored British Constitution. Any symptoms, therefore, that the middle-class are beginning to entertain a sense of independence and self-respect in the presence of the aristocracy are worth observing, not so much for themselves as for the consequences that are certain to result from the state of public sentiment which they attest. The refusal of the empty dignity of knighthood by Stephenson and Dargan is one such symptom, but manifestations of middle-class independence have been very frequent of late in the framing and working of Liberal Ministries, into which a pure middle-class element is now sure to enter.

Eight years ago, in the flush of his free trade triumph, middle-class Cobden was offered by the Whig aristocracy the place of Under Secretary to the Board of Trade, without a seat in the Cabinet. He refused it because it was beneath his dignity; and middle-class public opinion applauded him for that act. Middle-class Milner Gibson, the Radical Member for Manchester, accepted the place, but soon resigned it as incompatible with his political independence; and he rose in consequence in middle-class estimation. In the present Ministry the antagonism of the two elements—aristocratic and middle-class—has been far more conspicuous than ever before, and has reached a pitch that has made it a serious impediment to the harmonious working of the Cabinet. His aristocratic Lordship, Palmerston, undertook to alter in a material particular a bill relating to the Poor Laws, which had been drawn up and brought in by his middle-class colleague, Mr. Baines, without deeming it worth his while to consult a subordinate like Baines on the matter; and Mr. Baines, feeling himself snubbed, resigned. Public opinion said he was right and Palmerston wrong. Lord Palmerston apologizes, and Mr. Baines resumes his office, having taught aristocracy a lesson. Lord Palmerston says, jauntily from his seat in Parliament, that his middle-class colleague, Mr. Wilson, had talked “sheer nonsense,” while the Radical member of the ministry, Molesworth, in answering Lord Palmerston on the ballot question, declares that he (Palmerston) had only “gone over arguments which he had heard urged in Parliament *usque ad nauseam*.” In the first instance, public opinion says Lord Palmerston was impertinent, and in the second that Molesworth held the right tone. Molesworth was becoming unpopular and suspected at the time, but this hit set him straight again. While in the House Lord John Russell makes one of his solemnest constitutional appeals on behalf of Church-rates; in the lobby he discovers that the Attorney-General and the middle-class element of his Ministry have contumaciously divided against him to a man; and Lord John Russell finds himself considerably damaged by his position on this question. The climax was reached when wealthy but parvenu Mr. Strutt was unceremoniously begged to resign the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster to make way for Lord Grenville, he, himself, not having been consulted till all had been agreed upon. When Strutt made his simple and gentlemanly explanation to the House, an explanation in which his wounded feelings struggled with that higher pride which forbade him to give expression to it, the cheers of the House and the sympathy of the journals let him know that his case had touched a responsive chord in the public breast, and that the middle-class resented his insult as their own. Not again will the Whig Aristocracy venture to outrage middle-class sentiment by such cavalier treatment of their representative. When the middle-class of England are prepared to throw off the yoke of Feudalism, they will have the example of their ancestors of the 17th century to embolden them. Let them take heart and imitate the men of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth.