376 ACTUAL VALUE OF ENGLISH NOBILITY. 



intellectual and spiritual part of human nature throughout the masses of 

 society, ere the final scene of this world shall be closed ; but we cannot 

 believe that the provision for the natural and artificial wants and tastes 

 of animal and sensual man, can ever be supplied with such compara- 

 tively slight labour, as to leave the multitude of those engaged in the 

 supply, in the possession of leisure for attaining a just and regulating 

 philosophy. We allude not merely to the labourers and underlings 

 engaged in the world of business, but to their employers also; including 

 even the highest grades of merchants, and tradesmen, and agriculturists, 

 all men, in short, whose minds are unavoidably much occupied in for- 

 warding the pursuits of business. We deem it, then, absurd, to expect 

 that the mere reiteration, by one part of the community, of sentiments 

 and precepts asserting the intrinsic equality of men, except in morals 

 and talents, can ever avail to expel from the hearts of another part the 

 vulgar desire of distinction. And if this desire cannot be expelled from 

 the breast of mankind in general, but must in some way or other always 

 influence the masses of society, what is the character it will assume in 

 any nation old enough to possess a numerous body of citizens, able, 

 through their wealth, to live without those laborious exertions, which all 

 mankind are desirous to escape from ? Surely such men must feel entitled 

 to take class above those who are aiming at what them selves have already 

 attained ; and therefore they must be desirous (always remembering 

 they are not philosophers) of obtaining acknowledged distinctions to 

 set their claims to respect above the attacks of ignorant envy and dis- 

 appointed ambition ; desirous, that is to say, of being formed into a class 

 of hereditary nobles. 



We take for granted our readers will admit the above to be true, as 

 regards the wishes and pretensions of a numerous and important portion 

 of society at a certain stage of civil progress. We think unprejudiced 

 philosophy must admit, moreover, that this obviously natural claim for 

 distinction ought, because it is natural, to be indulged, unless it can be made 

 to appear to be essentially injurious to the general interest to indulge it. 

 Proceed we next to combat the only objection we have ever met with, 

 to this indulgence. 



It is not, in our view, a valid argument against hereditary distinctions, 

 that they are not often deserved by the individuals who bear them : that 

 the titled man is, nine times out of ten, an ordinary person. This 

 objection against titles would lie equally against the common courtesies 

 of civilized intercourse. It is not true, for instance, that I am a man's 

 obedient servant, because I subscribe myself to that effect in a letter ; 

 nor is any real respect for intrinsic qualities signified by the bowings, 

 and greetings, and voluntary concessions and subserviences of polite 

 society. Still there is no moral impropriety, no violation of rectitude in 

 these civilities, because no one looks for, or pretends to truth, in receiv- 

 ing and rendering them. We are not arguing for hereditary distinctions 

 as exponents of personal merit ; but as a humane and politic concession 

 to the natural wishes of a numerous body, whose own or whose ances- 

 tors' exertions, or good fortune, have raised them fairly above the labours 

 and privations, from which all men covet exemption. The fact that 

 society has found it necessary, for comfort and enjoyment sake, to 

 establish the system of conventional proprieties, above instanced, strikes 

 us as very strong evidence indeed in favour of hereditary nobility. We 

 here find an admission, that social intercourse requires an abandonment 



