Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/574

Rh 530 N O C N O C hindered from forming a class holding any substantial pri vilege. In a word, the growth of the peerage hindered the existence in England of any nobility in the Continental sense of the word. The esquires, knights, lesser barons, even the remote descendants of peers, that is, the noblesse of other countries, in England remained gentlemen, but not noble men, simple commoners, that is, without legal advantage over their fellow-commoners who had no jus imaginum to boast of. There can be no doubt that the class in England which answers to the noblesse of other lands is the class that bears coat -armour, the gentry strictly so called. Had they been able to establish and to maintain any kind of privilege, even that of mere honorary preced ence, they would exactly answer to Continental nobility. That coat - armour has been lavishly granted and often assumed without right, that the word &quot; gentleman &quot; has acquired various secondary senses, proves nothing; that is the natural result of a state of things in which the status of gentry carries with it no legal advantage, and yet is eagerly sought after on social grounds. If coat-armour, and thereby the rank of gentry, has been lavishly granted, some may think that the rank of peerage has often been lavishly granted also. In short, there is no real nobility in England ; for the class which answers to foreign nobility has so long ceased to have any practical privileges that it has long ceased to be looked on as a nobility, and the word nobility has been transferred to another class which has nothing answering to it out of the three British king doms. This last class in strictness takes in only the peers personally ; at the outside it cannot be stretched beyond those of their children and grandchildren who bear the courtesy titles of lord and lady. No attempt has been here made to trace out the history of nobility in the various countries and, we must add, cities of Europe. All that has been attempted has been to point out some general truths, and to refer to some specially striking instances. Once more, it must be borne in mind that, while it is essential to the idea of nobility that it should carry with it some hereditary privilege, the nature and extent of that privilege may vary endlessly. In the France, last century the nobility of France and the nobility of Poland alike answered to the very strictest definition of nobility ; but the political positions of the two were as broadly contrasted as the positions of any two classes of men could be. The nobility of France, keeping the most oppressive social and personal privileges, had been shorn of all political and even administrative power ; the tyrants Poland, of the people were the slaves of the king. In Poland sixty thousand gentlemen, rich and poor, famous and obscure, but all alike gentlemen, rode out to choose a king by a unanimous vote, and to bind him when chosen by such conditions as they thought good. Those sixty thousand, like the populus of Rome, formed a narrow oligarchy as regarded the rest of the nation, but a wild democracy among themselves. Poland, in short, came nearer than any kingdom or country of large extent to the nature of an aristocracy, as we have seen aristocracy in the aristocratic cities. The chief power of the state was placed neither in the prince nor in the nation at large ; it was held by a noble class. The kingly power in Poland, like the ducal power at Venice, had been so narrowed that Poland, though she still kept a king, called herself a republic no less than Venice. And whatever was taken from the king went to the gain of the noble order. But the nobility of a large country, even though used to act politically as an order, could never put on that orderly and legal character which distinguishes the true civic patriciates. It never could come so nearly as a civic patriciate could to being something like the rule of the best in any sense of those words. The tendency of modern times has been towards the breaking down of formal hereditary privileges. In modern commonwealths, above all, they have been thought to be essentially inconsistent with republican institutions. The truth of the matter is rather that the circumstances of most modern commonwealths have been unfavourable to the preservation, and still more to the growth, of privi leged bodies. Where they existed, as in Switzerland, they have been overthrown. Where they did not exist, as in America, everything has made it more and more impossible that they should arise. And, as modern changes have commonly attacked the power both of kings and of nobles, the common notion has come that king ship and nobility have some necessary connexion. It has seemed as if any form of nobility was inconsistent with a republican form of government, while nobility, in some shape or other, has come to be looked on as a natural, if not a necessary, appendage to a monarchy. And as far as regards the social side of kingship this is true. A court seems more natural where a chain of degrees leads gradually up from the lowest subject to the throne than when all beneath the throne are nearly on a level. And from one point of view, that from which the kingly house is but the noblest of the noble, kingship and nobility are closely allied. But in the more strictly political view monarchy and nobility are strongly opposed. Even the modified form of absolute monarchy which has existed in some Western countries, while it preserves, perhaps even strengthens, the social position of a nobility, destroys its political power. Under the fully-developed despotisms of the East a real nobility is impossible ; the prince raises and thrusts down as he pleases. It is only in a common wealth that a nobility can really rule ; that is, it is only in a commonwealth that the nobility can really be an aristocracy. And even in a democratic commonwealth the sentiment of nobility may exist, though all legal privi lege has been abolished or has never existed. That is to say, traditional feeling may give the members of certain families a strong preference, to say the least, in election to office. We have seen that this was the case at Athens ; it was largely the case in the democratic cantons of Switzerland ; indeed the nobility of Rome itself, after the privileges of the patricians were abolished, rested on no other foundation. It is important to bring these historical facts into notice, as they are likely to be con fused or forgotten among modern practical tendencies the other way. (E. A. r.) NOCERA INFERIORS, formerly NOCERA DEI PAGANI, a city of Italy in the province of Salerno at the foot of Monte Albino, 2 2 1 miles east-south-east of Naples on the railway to Salerno, which lies only 10 or 1 1 miles distant. In 1 881 it had a communal population of 15,858, that of the town was 12,830; but the interest of the place is almost exclu sively historical. Nuceria Alfaterna, first mentioned as assisting the Samnites in 315 B.C., was a few years later (308) besieged and captured by Fabius. In 216 Hannibal completely destroyed the city and dis persed its inhabitants; but the town, having been repeopled at some unknown date, appears again as a flourishing municipium in the time of Cicero. In 73 B.C. it was plundered by Spartacus, and under Augustus it received a Roman colony (Nuceria Constantia), afterwards recruited by Nero. At an early date the city became an episcopal see, and in the 12th century it sided with Innocent II. against Roger of Sicily, and suffered severely for its choice. A colony of Saracens introduced by Frederick II. probably gave rise to the epithet by which it was so long distinguished, as well as to the town of Pagani, which lies about a mile to the west. In 1385 Pope Urban VI. was besieged in the castle by Charles of Dnrazzo. Nocera was the birthplace of Solimena the painter ; and in the list of its bishops appears the name of Paulus Jovius. Nocera Inferiore must not be confounded with Nocera Umbria (the ancient Nuceria Camellaria), an old episcopal city 14 miles from Foligno.