ARISTOCRACY (Gr. aristocratia, from aristos, best, and kratos, power) means etymo logically the power or government of the best, noblest, or most worthy; and in the sense which it originally bore, A. had reference not to a social class, but to a form of govern ment in which the sovereignty was placed in the hands of a minority of the citizens of the state, exclusive altogether of the slave population, which generally existed in anti quity. It is in this sense also that we use it when we speak of the Italian states of the middle ages as aristocracies. In order to constitute an A., it Was further necessary that the minority which composed it should consist of the highest class, in not of wealth alone, but of birth and culture; the government of a minority in numbers simply, being known by the more odious name of an oligarchy. Were the whole government of England intrusted to the house of lords, even though that body were to become vastly more numerous than it is, so long as it did not include half of the whole adult males, and were not elective; but hereditary, we ShOuld be ruled by an A.,. and our rulers would be aristocrats in the antique sense of the term. In this, its political sense, the term A. has never been acclimatized in England, because the thing which it signifies has always been unknown. Our territorial nobility, though possessing great influence in the government of the country, has, at every stage of its career,been controlled either by the crown from above or the commons from below; and thus it is that, though more important as a social influence than in any other country, the English A. has never assumed the form of a ruling-class. When used with reference to English society, the term A. has two siguifications—a narrower and a wider one. According to the first, it is nearly synony
mous with nobility. In this sense, it will be treated of under that head, and its relative subdivisions. According to the second, it is synonymous with gentry, and includes the whole body of the people, titled and untitled, above a certain very indefinite social line. Perhaps the nearest approximation which we shall make to a definition of A. in this, its proper English sense, will be by adopting that which Aristotle has given not of aristo cratia, but of eugencia, or good birth. "Good birth," he says, "is ancient (long inherited) wealth and virtue." (Politic. lib. iv. c. 7.) The question as to the extent to which either of these qualities is requisite to constitute a claim to admission into the ranks of the A., is one to which probably not two persons, either within or without the pale, would return the same answer; but that the absence of either would be a ground of exclusion, is a point on which there will be little difference of opinion. No amount of mere wealth will, in general confer it either on a tradesman or his immediate descendants (see GENTLE MAN); and scarcely any deeds, however noble, will give it to him who is not the possessor of inherited fortune. Neither Burns the gauger, nor Shaw the life-guardsman, has ever been regarded as an aristocrat, though nobody denies that the one was a poet, and the other a hero. But when the claim to recognition as an aristocrat has been inherited, it will scarcely be lost by the individual himself, however adverse may be his worldly circumstances, or however ignoble his conduct; and it is not difficult to imagine an elevation of moral tone which would confer it even on a beggar.