RANK.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—There are many points in your article on " Rank " which would deserve much consideration. But there are just two arguments which I would venture to put forward in opposition to your views.
First, you assume, as so many seem to do, that reverence for hereditary rank somehow represses undue reverence for wealth. Surely the contrary is the case in England. Our aristocracy is, in the first place, to a large extent a plutocracy. _A. man cannot be a Peer unless he can keep up the position by a certain expenditure of money, and men refuse peerages which have not suitable money support joined to them.
Then, too, I am told, by those who remember the time, that the worship of Hudson, the railway king, was at least as strong among the class who are to preserve us from the tyranny of wealth, as among any other portion of the community. When, then, you threaten us with the tyranny of wealth or opinion if the tyranny of rank is withdrawn, would. it not be well to consider if these tyrannies do not work together now?
But, secondly, even if there were some ground for your fear, would not the new tyranny be in one respect the less evil ? It cannot be doubted that in England the people who are
demoralised by the influences are not merely commonplace people, but the very leaders of thought, to whom we might look for higher ideals of life. Charges of flunkeyism are freely made against men at whose feet on other grounds we should be proud to sit, and from whom we have, most of us, learnt something. Now, is not this due to the apparent touch of imaginative beauty which, we fancy, is connected with hereditary rank I have not yet had time to read more than the first chapters of the book of my friend, Mr. Bryce ; but I should indeed be astonished if he told us that the great writers of America bow before the Astors and Peabodys, and other millionaires, as some of our greatest have bowed before Dukes and Lords. Indeed, I may safely infer from your article that he does not say so. Surely this is an important difference which must affect the whole of the community, by affecting its choicest
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