I fulfilled your wish. Those rights are
ascertained; those claims are revived. A great majority of the Order
have given in their adhesion to the organized movement. The nation is
acquainted with your demands, accustomed to them, and the monarch once
favourably received them. I can do no more; I do not pretend to make
baronets, still less can I confer on those already made the right to
wear stars and coronets, the dark green dress of Equites aurati, or
white hats with white plumes of feathers. These distinctions, even
if their previous usage were established, must flow from the gracious
permission of the Crown, and no one could expect in an age hostile to
personal distinctions, that any ministry would recommend the sovereign
to a step which with vulgar minds would be odious, and by malignant ones
might be rendered ridiculous."

"Ridiculous!" said Sir Vavasour.

"All the world," said Mr Hatton, "do not take upon these questions the
same enlightened view as ourselves, Sir Vavasour. I never could for
a moment believe that the Sovereign would consent to invest such a
numerous body of men with such privileges."

"But you never expressed this opinion," said Sir Vavasour.

"You never asked for my opinion," said Mr Hatton; "and if I had given
it, you and your friends would not have been influenced by it. The point
was one on which you might with reason hold yourselves as competent
judges as I am. All you asked of me was to make out your case, and
I made it out. I will venture to say a better case never left these
chambers; I do not believe there is a person in the kingdom who could
answer it except myself. They have refused the Order their honours, Sir
Vavasour, but it is some consolation that they have never answered their
case."

"I think it only aggravates the oppression," said Sir Vavasour, shaking
his head; "but cannot you advise any new step, Mr Hatton? After so many
years of suspense, after so much anxiety and such a vast expenditure, it
really is too bad that I and Lady Firebrace should be announced at court
in the same style as our fishmonger, if he happens to be a sheriff."

"I can make a Peer," said Mr Hatton, leaning back in his chair and
playing with his seals, "but I do not pretend to make Baronets. I can
place a coronet with four balls on a man's brow; but a coronet with two
balls is an exercise of the prerogative with which I do not presume to
interfere."

"I mention it in the utmost confidence," said Sir