TITLES IN DENMARK.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In an article on "Titles in Denmark," which appears in the current number of the Spectator, the writer speaks of "the absurdity of abolishing titles in a country where it is not proposed to abolish hereditary monarchy ;" tells us that "if history shows anything conclusively, it is that society can abolish titles, but that Parliament cannot ;" and warns us that "the experiment has been tried three times in modern history under most favourable cir- cumstances, and has only succeeded once," viz., in the United States. "And in Norway," the Danish Radicals might trium- phantly reply, for in that sister Scandinavian land, hereditary nobility has been abolished by a law which passed the Storthing, August 1, 1821, and now there exists in Norway no privilege of birth. And yet, to use the words of Mr. Laing, in his "Residence in Norway, 1836 "—words equally applicable to the people in 1874, as any one who knows " Gamle Norge" would tell you—" the Norwegians are unquestionably a loyal people, attached in the highest degree to their Sovereign and his family."—I am, Sir, &c., [Mr. Mayhew is mistaken, the Norwegian example being on our side. The Storthing of 1821 did not abolish titles, though it abolished privileges. It prohibited the grant of new titles, but allowed existing ones to die out, the exact process we recom- mended to the Danes. There were but fifteen titled nobles, in our sense, in Norway, and they are not extinct yet. The Danes can abolish privilege, but not titles, and according to the tele- gram, were trying to do the latter only. Fuller information shows that they desire to abolish nobility altogether, which they can do on the Norwegian scheme, but in no other way.—En. Spectator.].
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