BOOK V
Of Legislative and Executive Power

CHAPTER XII

OF TITLES

Their origin and history. - Their miserable
absurdity. - Truth the only adequate reward of
merit.

THE case of mere titles is so absurd that it would deserve to be treated only with ridicule were it not for the serious mischiefs they impose on mankind. The feudal system was a ferocious monster, devouring, wherever it came, all that the friend of humanity regards with attachment and love. The system of titles appears under a different form. The monster is at length destroyed, and they who followed in his train, and fattened upon the carcasses of those he slew, have stuffed his skin, and, by exhibiting it, hope still to terrify mankind into patience and pusillanimity. The system of the Northern invaders, however odious, escaped the ridicule of the system of titles. When the feudal chieftains assumed a geographical appellation, it was from some place really subject to their authority; and there was no more absurdity in the style they assumed than in our calling a man, at present, the governor of Tangiers or the governor of Gibraltar. The commander in chief, or the sovereign, did not then give an empty name; he conferred an earldom or a barony, a substantial tract of land, with houses and men, and producing a real revenue. He now grants nothing but a privilege, equivalent to that of calling yourself Tom, who were beforetime called Will; and, to add to the absurdity, your new appellation is borrowed from some place perhaps you never saw, or some country you never visited. The style however is the same; we are still earls and barons, governors of provinces and commanders of forts, and that with the same evident propriety as the elector of Hanover, and arch treasurer of the empire, styles himself king of France.

Can there be anything more ludicrous than that the man who was yesterday Mr St John, the most eloquent speaker of the British house of commons, the most penetrating thinker, the umpire of maddening parties, the restorer of peace to bleeding and exhausted Europe, should be to-day lord Bolingbroke?¹ In what is he become greater and more venerable than he was? In the pretended favor of a stupid and besotted woman, who always hated him, as she uniformly hated talents and virtue, though, for her own interest, she was obliged to endure him.

The friends of a man upon whom a title has recently been conferred must either be wholly blinded by the partiality of friendship, not to feel the ridicule of his situation; or completely debased by the parasitical spirit of dependence, not to betray their feelings. Every time they essay to speak, they are in danger of blundering upon the inglorious appellations of Mr and Sir². Every time their tongue falters with unconfirmed practice, the question rushes upon them with irresistible force. 'What change has my old friend undergone; in what is he wiser or better, happier or more honorable?' The first week of a new title is a perpetual war of the feelings in every spectator; the genuine dictates of common sense, against the arbitrary institutions of society. To make the farce more perfect, these titles are subject to perpetual fluctuations, and the man who is to-day earl of Kensington will tomorrow resign, with unblushing effrontery, all appearance of character and honor, to be called marquis of Kew. History labors under the Gothic and unintelligible burden; no mortal patience can connect the different stories, of him who is to-day lord Kimbolton, and to-morrow earl of Manchester; to-day earl of Mulgrave, and to-morrow marquis of Normanby and duke of Buckinghamshire.

The absurdity of these titles strikes us the more, because they are usually the reward of intrigue and corruption. But, were it otherwise, still they would be unworthy of the adherents of reason and justice. When we speak of Mr St John, as of the man who by his eloquence swayed contending parties, who withdrew the conquering sword from suffering France, and gave thirty years of peace and calm pursuit of the arts of life and wisdom to mankind, we speak of something eminently great. Can any title express these merits? Is not truth the consecrated and single vehicle of justice? Is not the plain and simple truth worth all the cunning substitutions in the world? Could an oaken garland, or a gilded coronet, have added one atom to his real greatness? Garlands and coronets may be bestowed on the unworthy, and prostituted to the intriguing. Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she most disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By this scheme of naked truth, virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer will more fully do her justice, while vise, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to gloss her actions, of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender, will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.

Footnotes