l generals, and ambitious
barons who are not quite good enough for earldoms, are "thrown into the
common sink, which is viscounts." Not only heralds and genealogists, but
every one who has the historic sense, must have felt an emotion of
regret when the splendid title of twenty-third Baron Dacre was merged by
Mr. Speaker Brand in the pinchbeck dignity of first Viscount Hampden.

After viscounts, barons. The baronage of England is headed by the
bishops; but, as we have already discoursed of those right reverend
peers, we, Dante-like, will not reason of them, but pass on--only
remarking, as we pass, that it is held on good authority that no human
being ever experiences a rapture so intense as an American bishop from a
Western State when he first hears himself called "My lord" at a London
dinner-party. After the spiritual barons come the secular barons--the
"common or garden" peers of the United Kingdom. Of these there are
considerably more than three hundred; and of all, except some thirty or
forty at the most, it may be said without offence that they are products
of the opulent Middle Class. Pitt destroyed deliberately and for ever
the exclusive character of the British peerage when, as Lord
Beaconsfield said, he "created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it
with the patrician oligarchy." And in order to gain admission to this
"plebeian aristocracy" men otherwise reasonable and honest will spend
incredible sums, undergo prodigious exertions, associate themselves with
the basest intrigues, and perform the most unblushing tergiversations.
Lord Houghton told me that he said to a well-known politician who
boasted that he had refused a peerage: "Then you made a great mistake. A
peerage would have secured you three things that you are much in need
of--social consideration, longer credit with your tradesmen, and better
marriages for your younger children."

It is unlucky that a comparatively recent change has put it out of the
power of a Prime Minister to create fresh Irish peers, for an Irish
peerage was a cheap and convenient method of rewarding political
service.[24] Lord Palmerston held that, combining social rank with
eligibility to the House of Commons, it was the most desirable
distinction for a politician. Pitt, when his banker Mr. Smith (who lived
in Whitehall) desired the privilege of driving through the Horse Guards,
said: "No, I can't give you that; but I will make you an Irish peer;"
and the banker became the fir