LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
A NEW ARISTOCRACY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sia,—In your admirable article on " The Radicals and the Government," you describe the democracy to which Mr. Labouchere looks forward, as embodying " the will of a Jacobin clique endorsed by a mob of yielding followers." Without following the arguments of that article, which deal with a larger and more important subject, perhaps you will permit me to call attention to what, under such circumstances, would be the position of that Jacobin clique. There is no more curious feature of the times than the immense import- ance which the new Member of Parliament—especially if of extreme Radical views—imagines to attach to bis own person and to the rest of the House of Commons. The outcry about the punishment of Mr. O'Brien, the amusingly illogical and Anti-Liberal idea, so freely enlarged upon by most Gladstonian speakers, that a Member of Parliament was not to be treated as other men are treated, is the distinct outcome of the feeling that the representative of the people is a member of a privi- leged class. Probably, we shall find more marked and more numerous instances of this feeling in the next Parliament.
In France it has been exhibited to a painful degree. The lofty assumptions of Deputies and officials, going on the ground that the Republic recognises no other rank, have dis- gusted the French people more than any pretensions of the old nobility ever could have done ; and it was, in fact, the contempt for these Marquis de la Republique, as they were called, which supported and gave life to the Boulangist move- ment, and induced the country to go on putting a desperate trust in a leader who never really won their confidence, and who, under any other conditions, would have been laughed out of France after his duel with M. Floquet.
In the United States, where no distinctions of rank are supposed to be known, it appears, from the letter of your American correspondent, Mr. Forrest Morgan, that an ex- ceedingly powerful and tyrannical aristocracy—perhaps I should say plutocracy, but it is of very little importance which term is used,—kakistocracy, if you like,—is in operation there. There seems to be at least some ground for expecting that this is to be the future of most democracies, at least of those who own no Sovereign. The aristocratic system cannot be entirely abolished, but, of course, its representatives may be wholly changed ; and we may even come to that reductio ad absurdum of class-legislation, the old law of the Florentine Republic, by which no man of noble birth could ever hold office. Probably, no class of men has ever really desired absolute equality ; though one occasionally finds some such sentiment among a class of academic republicans, who appear to look forward, after the abolition of all difference of rank, to a kind of timocracy of intellect, represented by persons eminent in science, art, and letters,—possibly themselves. Should even these conditions of eminence be disregarded, there would still remain a possible oligarchy of the most suc- cessful; and I would ask your readers to consider the most successful men they know, and join with me in the prayer that Providence may at least preserve us from that awful
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