THE ACCIDENT OF BIRTH.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Srn,—The above phrase has been unusually conspicuous of late, even in the Spectator's columns, where it occurs again in the last number. In what the " accident " consists I fail to grasp, except in the case when the individual born is, through disregard of the ordinances of religion and law on the part of his parents, deprived of an assured legal identity among the body politic. Let us postulate a Duke : the Duke marries, and in due time acquires an heir in the person of his eldest male child. On what grounds is it " accidental " that this child is the son of a Duke and heir to a dukedom, and not the son of a dustman with hereditary reversionary rights to a dustman's calling ? The " accidental " circumstances appear to me to be exclusively confined to the subsequent career of the son of either the Duke or the dustman. The first may prove unworthy of his inherited privileges (a contingency which Unionist Peers are seeking to meet and to remedy) : the second may rise, unhindered by any caste prejudices so far as our Constitutional machinery is concerned, to the highest offices of State, which offices he may fill creditably, adorn, or disgrace according to his capacity and temperament after attaining to them.—I am, Sir, &c., W. E. M.
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