The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-05-20
THE DIGNITY OF LABOR.
From the London Spectator.

sgO was to look down on wealth AZ somaibins
any tradesman might obtain, to prefer pedio
gree and privilege to all things; but after these
10 eXalt intellectual ability, or, still better,
artistic power. An actor or a soul ptor might
be gentleman but a millionaire could not
be, was necessarily parvenu who relied on
his contemplate money and called for "some
more ourricles." The old peer had rather
pride in contrasting his poverty with the ma.
bob's or merchants wealth, in showing how
little his social position depended upon such
an accidental circumstance as the amount of
his rent-roll. Wealth, when it included a
right to dispose of seats in the Lower House
was indeed important as direct
source of power; but wealth in itself
was an attribute of vulgarity-a feeling still
surviving, we believe, in the Faubourg ST.
German, where the freaks of Duo de Dou-
deauville are tolerated, not because he is
wealthy, but because he is also Laroche-
jaquelin. Great mobiles very often rejected
wealth. Many of those who fought the rail-
ways as nasty levelliug things saw quite
clearly the wealth they would bring, aud
many more struggled hard against suffering
cities to rise upon their lands. The Earl OF
Abergavenny, we have been told, regarded the
IiFe of Tunbridge Wells, rise which will
bring them scores OF thousands year, with
bitter hostility, and, as far as they could, pro-
hibited it; and mine after mine lay unopened
nj the North because great landholders could
world which would have resulted from open
Jog them. That tone has bsen changing
slowly for more than thirty years. Kings are
now eager for money, eager to degree
which wonderfully diminishes their divinity
in popular estimation, and great peers do not
by iteelf sort OF dignity. The Prince
Consort was man who fairly sympathized
with intellectual power, and had a good in
sight into the way the world was drifting
yet he wrote to say that his household ought
to consist exclusively of persons very high
born, very distinguished, cor very rich" the
latter being quite novel idea among German
princes, who sup to 1915 liked wealth for
themselves, Though they managed their great
estates most wretchedly, but did not respect
it in their subjects. The Eector of Hssse's
remark to constitutional reformer was nearer
their true feelipg-"What are your' ga
brewer, your Hghness." "Brewers shau't
governl" One would have expected that
feeling to linger among the great nobles but
they are doing all they can to invest the pos
session of money with sort of dignity-of
social dignity, at all events-which is opposed
to all the traditions Of their order, as well as
to their own real interests. Lord Salisbury
though head only of an Elizabethan family, is
for many reasons big Peer, and only
three weeks ago he said in his place that
in his opinion great wealth accumulated
in business gave a claim to seat in
the Upper House; that he wished the claim
were allowed; that the lords ought to repre-
sent all kinds Of property; thereby, in his
own Judgment at all events, doing all the
honor he could to the possession of cash.
Lord Granville this very week talked from his
place of the money Lord Cairns had made in
his profession as one Of his highest titles to
respect, and the Peers do not seem to have
thought the remark anything unusual. Even
Lord Derby, who is supposed to represe mt
, aristocratic feeling more closely than any Eng
lish statesman, and who for that reason car
ries the Lords in his pocket, and appoints the
Irish representative Peers as fully as his
father appointed members OF the Lower
House, treated wealth as lift were in itself a
greatness, something which not only gave
dignity to its possessor, but which ought to
give dignity. This "House," he said, "rests
upon foundation of sure and settled pro
perty;" it fought to consist of men with
large hereditary possessions"-ideas which
hundred years ago, even if entertained
would scarcely have been expressed, anC
would have seemed to the House, then very
poor, almost revolutionary.
This reverence for money in masses is a new
thing in the great, and one for which 1t is MOI
easy to account. We usually explain its ex
istence in the little as form Of the serviltJ
which is the bane Of English middle class
character, but that theory-the correctness
of which we should dispute, believing tina
sefshness has more to do with the matter thar
servility- will not account for its existence
among long. descended msgnates. 1t mus
rather be due to an unconscious exaggeratioI
of the truth that in the modern world none,
is power, that when great things have to b
done it is only the posses
sors OF large masses OF treasur
who can do them, who can set multitudes il
motion by their mere fiat. A man with
couple Of millions, say, can do so much. w
do not find, as a rule, that he does do it; i
this country, at all events, the old spirit whic
induced men to expend wealth in public on
terprises having apparently decayed, partl
from decline, it may be, OF care for the Stat
partly from feeling that great things hav
passed beyond the range OF individual cap'
Cities The very rich own cities, but do nc
build them, though the Grosvenors in CT
rious indirect way, are doing something ik
IT: and we cannot recall an instance of an in
mense benefaction--say full water-supply
a CITY, or a new university, or even a harbor-
unless given with notion OF ultimate repa!
ment. Still, the potentiality ofdoing is away
there-Miss Burdett Coutts, for exampl
creates, as it were, by v0ltion
market which is like a cathedral, and r
moves one grand trouble OF district-ar
the magnates, relieved by their own wealt
wealth which is in many cases quite as ne
as that of the parvenus, from the anciel
feeling of Jealous dislike and suspicion, reoo
nize that potentiality to the full. Or rathe
to put IL still more plainly, they always r
cognized it, but not possessing 1t themselye
tried hard to deny its existence, and now tn
the necessity for expressing an unreal co
tempt has passed away, they once more pc