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the present House of Lords.
All confiscation is to be reprobated, all deprivation (except in bad cases of abuse) of what is actually possessed.
But one would wish, if one set about wishing, for the extinction of title, after the death of the holder, and for the dispersion of property by a stringent law of bequest.
Our society should be homogeneous, and only in this way can it become so.
But aristocracy is in little danger.
“I suppose, sir,” a dissenting minister said to me, the other day, “you found, when you were in America, that they envied us there our great aristocracy.”
It was his sincere belief that they did, and such probably, is the sincere belief of our middle class in general; or, at any rate, that if the Americans do not envy us this possession, they ought to. And my friend, one of the great Liberal party which has now, I suppose, pretty nearly run down its deceased wife's sister, poor thing, has his hand and heart full, so far as politics are concerned, of the question of church disestablishment.
He is eager to set to work at a change which, even if it were desirable (and I think it is not), is yet off the line of those reforms which are really pressing.
Mr. Lyulph Stanley, Professor Stuart, and Lord Richard Grosvenor are waiting ready to
Boston. De Wolfe, Fiske &c Co. 361 and 365 Washington Street. 1888.
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