THE INHERITANCE OF ABILITY 85 



English history of the descent of ability and its recog- 

 nition by the grant of hereditary titles. Among the 

 children of Roger and Joan Boyle two are specially 

 noteworthy. One, Michael, had many distinguished 

 descendants ; among his sons were a Bishop of Waterford 

 and an Archbishop of Tuam. The other, Richard, 

 was the great Earl of Cork, whose descendants in the 

 male line received between them some ten or twelve 

 titles. In a single generation four members of the 

 family were elevated to the House of Lords, while one 

 of the most illustrious, Robert Boyle, the great philo- 

 sopher and man of science — a seventh son and four- 

 teenth child — repeatedly refused a peerage. After two 

 marriages with co-heiresses, the senior branch of the 

 house was extinguished in the male line. It has been 

 represented for the last four or five generations by the 

 Dukes of Devonshire, who, through a female descent, 

 have become possessed of the Earldom of Burlington, 

 one of the many Boyle titles. 



As long as ability marries ability, a large proportion 

 of able offspring is a certainty, and ability is a more 

 valuable heirloom in a family than mere material wealth, 

 which, moreover, will follow ability sooner or later. 



It is impossible to foresee the mode of development 

 of our social organism. It may be that the lineal 

 inheritance of material wealth by successive generations 

 will cease to be compatible with the institutions of a 

 future stage of civilization. But, whatever be the 

 political or social constitution, ability must always make 

 its mark, and remain as a very real form of capital to 

 the individual and the family who possess it. In the 

 distant future, capital, in the ordinary sense of the 



