1S31.] Affairs in General. 215 



" Mr. Baring, we hear, is to be raised to the peerage. We do not know 

 why Mr. Baring should not be made a peer; but what we want to know is, 

 where this lord-making is to end ? There may be room for lord Rothschild, 

 Lord Cohen, Lord Ricardo, Lord Heseltine, and a few more ; but where are 

 we to sit, when we are all lords together ?" 



We cannot answer this question, and we must leave it to Sir George 

 Naylor, or any of those useful individuals who provide blue spirits and 

 white, black spirits and grey, green dragons, blue boars, and bloody 

 hands, for the coach pannels of prosperous aldermen, and other rising 

 characters of this world. But in the case of men like the bankers, we 

 think that nothing but the most stubborn prejudice could be blind to 

 their claims to the peerage. What can be more dignified than the per- 

 petual putting up of money in one till, and taking out of another, spend- 

 ing twelve hours out of every twenty-four in calculating how many 

 pence discount are to be deducted from a country bill, or keeping five 

 hundred accounts for five hundred Tom O'Styleses and John O'Nokeses, 

 in palpitating over the rise or fall of stocks a farthing per cent., and 

 dabbling with both hands, and all the soul, in ink, arithmetic, money- 

 broking, and bill dealing, for fifty years together. If all this will not 

 qualify a man to be a Noble, to regulate the national affairs, to display 

 personal dignity, and be capable of the large views and manly concep- 

 tions essential to the guidance of states, we do not know what will. 



To Mr. Baring we can have no objection. But one point is worth re- 

 membering. A good deal of the national displeasure at some of these 

 hasty promotions has arisen from finding, that after giving the honour, 

 we have to pay for it ourselves ; in other words, that besides making a 

 Peer we have been performing the supererogatory work of making a 

 Pensioner. Now it becomes a matter of some import to ascertain the 

 means of any new candidate to support his title. Of the opulence of 

 the individual in question far be it from us to hint a doubt. The truth 

 is, we know nothing about it, and he may be either as rich as Croesus, or 

 not worth Sir George Naylor's fee, for any thing that concerns us ; but, 

 must confess, that we have a general mistrust of the money of trade. 

 We can look at the salt-pans of a Duke of Devonshire ; the Duke of Bed- 

 ford can show us a Covent Garden Market ; Lord Grosvenor can exhibit 

 a vista of brick-kilns poisoning the air of half a province ; Lord 

 Gwydir can defy fate, as long as there is virtue in mooring-chains. 

 All those substantialities, if not altogether of the most chivalric 

 nature, are yet something tangible. But where are we to look 

 for the substance of a race of men who carry their wealth in a 

 Bill of Exchange ? Whose ledger is their gold mine ; and whose 

 desk is their goods and chattels ? What was Monsieur Lafitte a 

 month ago ? The Plutus of France, commanding, with a touch of 

 his pen, a flood of gold to flow wherever this more than magi- 

 cian willed ; striking one dynasty out of the land, and fixing ano- 

 ther. Yet, if the stories from Paris are true, Monsieur Lafitte is now 

 fit only " to point a moral and adorn a tale." M. Rothschild is our 

 Plutus his throne too is declared to be founded on a rock of gold ; 

 and we have no objection to its being as solid as the poles, but we would 

 not pledge our smallest coin that there is any thing like solidity in bank 

 paper under the moon ; and have we not peers enough, when we have 

 four hundred and twenty ? 



