“ DISTINCTIONS SHOULD BE MADE.” 421 
polise all the honorary distinctions of the empire. 
They possess titular distinctions peculiar to them- 
selves, which at once attest and define the rank 
of each individual occupied in his own profession ; 
but, as if they only deserve honours, they are se- 
lected to recruit the ranks of our nobility, and to 
share among themselves all those tokens of outward 
dignity, which the laws and customs of other nations 
throw open to excellence of every sort. The pro- 
fessional titles belonging to the army and the navy 
fix at once their station in society, and these are 
the proper and legitimate rewards they should have. 
So also in the bar and in the church, there are 
titles and dignities of the same description, differing, 
indeed, as they rightly should, in name, but equally 
marking the different gradations of estimation or of 
preferment, to which those who enjoy them have 
respectively attained. With these appropriate dis- 
tinctions let them be satisfied; or, if one or two 
orders of knighthood are instituted for conferring 
additional dignity upon the possessors of animal 
courage (we use not the term reproachfully), let 
there at least be others, equally set apart for those 
who have achieved the most glorious of all victories 
—the victory of knowledge over prejudice; whose 
conquests have at length seated science and civi- 
lisation upon the throne of Europe, formerly occupied 
by barbarism and ignorance. This is the distinction 
which should be drawn; a distinction as great as 
that between matter and spirit, between the arts of 
war and the arts of peace. We deny not that both 
these qualifications are essential, in the present 
condition of the world, to the prosperity of a state, 
EE 3 
