Lord Pleads for Better Manners

“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.” -Samuel Pepys. Famous for his diary and being a 17th century gentleman. – “Why did men of the early seventeenth century emphasize courtesy and good manners? I take it for two reasons. First that they were models of courtesy and good manners themselves. The men of the seventeenth century were, I suspect, the greatest breed of Englishmen that England has ever produced, partly because they poed good manners themselves and partly because they realized the enormous importance of courtesy and good manners in the common transactions of life.”

Lord Rosebery Denounces the Decay of Manners Throughout the World as a Bad Sign

Lord Rosebery recently talked to the boys of the Royal Grammar school at Guildford on the subject of manners. He founded his discourse upon one of the statutes of the school framed 300 years ago, which he believed required much more attention than was usually paid to it. The statute said that assemblies without just cause must be punished. Honesty and clean speech, humility, courtesy and good manners were to be established by all good means. “Now, the point I wish to labor for the moment,” Lord Rosebery proceeded , "is that of courtesy and manners. Why did men of the early seventeenth century emphasize courtesy and good manners? I take it for two reasons. First that they were models of courtesy and good manners themselves. The men of the seventeenth century were, I suspect, the greatest breed of Englishmen that England has ever produced, partly because they possessed good manners themselves and partly because they realized the enormous importance of courtesy and good manners in the common transactions of life. 

“I think there has been a decay of manners in England and Scotland and all over the world. It is not limited to our own people by any means. You see it on the continent just as much —but depend upon it— it is a bad sign. If people have not the spirit of reverence themselves, even if it be only an outward reverence, they are not going the right way, but possibly going the wrong way. “Manners have an enormous commercial value in life. I sometimes wonder why it is not harped on more on these occasions. No one can have lived as long as I have without noticing the weight and value of manners in the ordinary transactions of life, in public life, and having seen men by appearance and manners get such a start of very much abler fellows, that they have been able by appearance and manners to keep their place much higher in public life than their own abilities or service would entitle them to. “Good appearance, you may say, is not at our command. There I do not agree. Good looks are not at our command. They are the gift of the gods and are the possession only of a small percentage, of mankind. But good appearance, straight-forward appearance, manly appearance without self consciousness, which is the most agreeable feature perhaps of all appearance, is within the command of everybody. 

“So much for appearance, but let us take manners, which I think are even more important. I will not put my appeal for manners on the higher consideration, such as sure signs of a noble nature expressed in outward form, though that is true enough. I will only put it today on the question of the commercial value of manners, and I ask every boy who hears me to bear away with him in mind the enormous value of manners from this day onward through his life, and they will give him a value which he will never possess without them, and give him a start over other boys, who neither strive to nor attain good manners.” — Morning Press, 1913

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