POLITICAL DIFFERENTIATION. 445 



having, many of them, no reference to the land, and no more connec- 

 tion with one place than another. It is true that, of the titles artifi- 

 cially conferred, the higher are habitually derived from the names of 

 districts and towns : so simulating, but only simulating, the ancient 

 feudal titles expressive of actual lordship over territories. The other 

 modern titles, however, which have arisen with the growth of political, 

 judicial, and other functions, have not even nominal references to local- 

 ities. This change naturally accompanies the growing integration of 

 the parts into a whole, and the rise of an organization of the whole 

 which disregards the divisions among the parts. 



More effective still, in weakening those primitive political divisions 

 initiated by militancy, is increasing industrialism. This acts in two 

 ways, firstly, by creating a class having power derived otherwise than 

 from territorial possessions or ofiicial position ; and, secondly, by gen- 

 erating ideas and sentiments at variance with the ancient assumptions 

 of class-superiority. As we have already seen, rank and wealth are at 

 the outset habitually associated. Existing uncivilized people still show 

 us this relation. The chief of a kraal among the Koranna Hottentots 

 is " usually the person of greatest property." In the Bechuana lan- 

 guage " the word kosi . . . has a double acceptation, denoting either a 

 chief or a richi man." Such small authority as a Chinook chief has, 

 " rests on riches, which consists in wives, children, slaves, boats, and 

 shells." So was it originally in Europe. In ancient Spain the title 

 ricos homhres, applied to the barons, definitely identified the two 

 attributes. Indeed, it is manifest that before the development of com- 

 merce, and while possession of land could alone give largeness of 

 means, lordship and I'iches were directly connected ; so that, as Sir 

 Henry Maine remarks, "the opposition commonly set up between 

 birth and wealth, and particularly wealth other than landed property, 

 is entirely modern." When, how^ever, with the arrival of industry at 

 that stage in which wholesale transactions bring large profits, there 

 arise traders who vie with, and exceed, many of the landed nobility in 

 wealth, and when, by conferring obligations on kings and nobles, such 

 traders gain social influence, there comes an occasional removal of the 

 barrier between them and the titled classes. In France the progress 

 began as early as 1271, when there were issued letters ennobling Raoul, 

 the goldsmith " the first letters conferring nobility in existence." The 

 precedent, once established, is followed with increasing frequency, and 

 sometimes, under pressure of financial needs, there grows up the prac- 

 tice of selling titles, in disguised ways or openly. In France, in 1702, 

 the king ennobled two hundred persons at three thousand livres a head ; 

 in 1706, five hundred at six thousand a head. And then, the breaking 

 down of the ancient political divisions thus caused, is furthered by that 

 weakening of them consequent on the growing spirit of equality fos- 

 tered by industrial life. In proportion as men are daily habituated to 

 maintain their own claims while respecting the claims of others, which 



