MR. HOOLEY AND HIS BARONETCY.
THE distribution of honours, as Mr. Gladstone once had to say with a certain roughness, belongs exclusively, like the distribution of bishoprics, to the head of her Majesty's Government, and becomes to him an increasing difficulty and trouble. It is not only that the pressure for honours becomes more severe with the increase of the Empire, every English- man who makes a success anywhere expecting to find it acknowledged by the gift of a title, but there are new compli- cations arising from a new relation between titles and wealth. For centuries it has been a kind of custom that the possession of an exceptionally large landed estate entitled its possessor, if m any way a distinguished, or even active, person, to be admitted to the honours of the Peerage. If a man acquired many manors in any way, by success in civil war, or by ob- taining grants, or by marrying a great heiress, or even by purchase, he became visibly important in the community, and the Crown acknowledged his importance by granting him an hereditary distinction. If he performed services, so much the better ; but if he did not perform them, the posses- sion of land implied power, and the power was openly recog- nised in that way. So regular did the system at last become, that Pitt said he thought every man with £10,000 a year in land—the equivalent of £30,000 a year to-day--ought to be made a Peer, ought, that is, to be admitted for ever into thab system of graded " influences " by which England was in his time governed. Even now, though land has lost much of its value as a possession, and a great landlord can no longer nominate Members of Parliament, we doubt if the tradition has wholly died away, and believe that a man of good character who owned fifty thousand acres and made a few speeches on the side of the Ministry of the day would be considered, as a "great commoner," to have a claim to a peerage. The transfer of power to personalty has only extended the list of the " deserving " ; and a great capitalist, merchant, financier, contractor, or even speculator, is considered entitled to ask for hereditary honour, the only difference being that, as per- sonalty makes to itself wings with great ease, the Crown likes to wait a generation and see the wealth solidify. The son of a man with two millions, if he can do anything at all which can by any stretch of imagination be called service, is pretty sure of a peerage if he wishes for one; and the only severe comments passed on his elevation will come from the men of ancient family. Even they will only be bitter in words, the unexpressed idea being that while the old rewards continue to attract the new men, the ancient order of things, and especially the graded hierarchy of society, will remain secure. The claim of wealth is, in fact, admitted as a form of power, though perhaps not quite so fully as it was by Charles V., who made of his bankers, the Fuggers, sovereign Princes, a position they still retain so fully that one of them in this generation claimed exemption from a law directing the exptdsion of the Jesuits on the ground that, as Prince, he was above law, and had his claim allowed.
Wealth is a tangible fact, and usually a visible one, which need not puzzle a Premier much, but of late years a complication has arisen, custom and opinion alike deciding that certain uses of wealth constitute a title to honour. To serve the State has always been a claim, to serve the community is to serve the State, and what service can be in peace-times so direct and unmistakable as to part with a great sum for a philanthropic, or an educational, or a scientific object ? The newspapers, especially the Radical newspapers, acknowledge that claim, eagerly, as a sort of set-off against the monopoly otherwise belonging to the public service, and the Premier of the day, though he may smile to himself, sardonically or genially, according to temperament, usually finds it convenient, and even pleasant, to admit it. He does not, it is true, often grant peerages as a reward for munificence; but the baronetcy which is a step to a peerage, and the numerous honoiars- which last for life only, are granted so freely—aristocrats say so recklessly—that it is really not very unreasonable that when a man who has given away, say, 2100,000, does not receive a titular reward, he should feel a little aggrieved. He has served the community, he thinks, and his service has not been "fittingly acknowledged." It is very difficult, moreover, for politicians, who are human, not to think that service to their party is service to the community, and as every party needs money, particularly at election time, it often happens that men who have fought expensive seats, or who have resigned safe seats in favour of statesmen who were needed in the House, or who have subscribed large funds to their party's war-chest, find that their road to honours has been singularly smoothed. They do not purchase their titles, but their titles come when they have made certain rather heavy payments, very much as estates come, or rare pictures, or anything else that is desirable. It is not unnatural that under such circumstances the public, which is a little brutal, should remark, not angrily, but yet with a certain scorn, that such and such a baronetcy, or order, or knighthood was " bought " in such and such a way, or that a man like Mr. Hooley, who clearly does not know his milieu, should think that he could obtain an hereditary decoration by the simple
process of drawing a big cheque. His method was very crude, but he did not understand forms, or despised them, and so made a blunder which when revealed in Court covered him with ridicule and his helpers in the affair with a sort of social disgrace.
The thing leaves, as the Times said, "a bad taste in the mouth," a sort of impression that political society, and indeed the whole upper stratum of the social system, had become a little more corrupt than of old; yet it is very difficult to see where the remedy can be found. It is easy to say "Abolish titles," but we very much doubt whether if a plebiscite could be taken the English people would do it, and are quite certain that if it were done, rank as a social distinction would be replaced by wealth, which would not be in any way an improvement. It is difficult to see that a revolution which left Mr. Beit, Mr. Robinson, and other men in their position the only Princes in the land would in any degree ennoble or purify English society,—the Americans have tried it, and their most thoughtful men are certainly displeased with the results. Nor will mere apathy effect much. It is customary to say that if titular dis- tinctions are given for pecuniary reasons they will cease to be valued, but we are not sure that that is true. The desire for such distinctions lies very deep in Englishmen. We never heard of any one committing suicide because he was refused a knighthood—though a Lord Mayor's coachman did kill himself because somebody else drove the state carriage on a 9th of November—but we have known of men with splendid records who went to their graves melancholy because in the absence of decorations they thought their services "passed over with contempt." Forty years ago everybody said simple knighthood was contemptible, unworthy even of a Lord Mayor, but to-day a good many persons are willing to pur- chase that lowest of titular distinctions for £25,000,—the price of many a pleasant estate, with woods and waters, tenantry and deference. Moreover, the English, with all their virtues, and they have many, are plutocrats at heart. They reverence wealth, they like those who lead them to be rich, and if titles were sold in open market they would purchase them as evidence of riches. We do not hesitate to say that if the grade of Viscount were openly sold there would be every two years some man ready to give £250,000 for so coveted a distinction, which of itself would then proclaim that he ;belonged to the 'First Fortunes" of the English-speaking race. We fear much that the only working remedy is for the Premier of the day to give special care and attention to decorations, to believe that they are valuable properties of which he is trustee, and to distribute them with as much care as is shown in the case of important official appointments. He cannot hope entirely to escape from pressure. He is obliged to re- member now and again that he is, in theory, the servant of a Monarchy. He cannot wholly reject the modern idea that unusual wealth means power, and all powers should be bound, when possible, into the existing system. But he can take trouble in his investigation of character, he can insist that if benevolence is the claim, it shall be benevolence that unmis- takably benefits the community, and he can insist that his judgment shall be left free, and snub savagely anything in the nature of a bargain for honours, even if one of the parties to it should be an important political club, or association of which his party approves. Carelessness in the distribution of honours should, in fact, be against a Premier's conscience. In the present case, at any rate, the Premier has set an exoellent example. A careless Premier would have let Mr. Hooley slip into the baronetcy. Lord Salisbury did not.
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