" 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, 

 e e 3 



