A PLEA FOR ARISTOCRACY.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 825, 15 June 1871, Page 3

A PLEA FOR ARISTOCRACY.

The fact of the late Mr Brassey having bequeathed a fortune of £7,000,000 sterling to his legatees, has set some of the London journalists speculating upon the dangers which may arise to society now that the capitalists have the whole civilised world as the sphere of their operations, and will be thus enabled to accumulate fortunes so vast "that their owners will have all the power of great states and none of their responsibilities." Some of these dangers are much nearer than many people imagine. They are beginning to alarm the inhabitants of the United States, where half a dozen men virtually govern a territory—that owned by the Pacific Railroad Company—as large as a good many European kingdoms, and are rich enough to control a majority in Congress and to keep judges of the Distriet Court in their pay. A plutocracy, however, seems to be the outgrowth of a particular stage of society, and is very often the precursor of its decadence. In Rome, a plutocracy farmed the revenues and defrauded the finances of the country. In Venice, it composed that solid and jealous oligarchy which replaced the pure democracy of its earlier constitution. In* France, it was made upjof farmers-general, whose infamous exactions did so much to precipitate the great revolution. In England up to the present time, the elements of plutocracy have been absorbed into, and, as it were, assimilated by the aristocracy, and when the latter is destroyed, a plutocracy will most likely be erected on its ruins. For a dominant class is inevitable. The truth seems to be this—that the love of eminence, power, and distinction is instinctive in aud ineradicable from the human mind. It finds its most harmless gratification, probably in titles and decorations, especially if these are dissociated from political privileges. But where, as under democratic institutions, titles and decorations are discarded, the passion for pre-eminence and power expends itself in the acquisition of wealth, and of the magnificent and sumptuous objects which wealth commands. We cannot help fearing, however, that a wider distance will separate the rich from the poor in a state of society in which a plutocracy forms the upper crust, than in one in which a class distinguished by its refinement, culture, and courtesy, constitutes the Corinthian capital of the social column. —" Australasian."