ned by checks and guarantees. There is an
insolence of wealth, as there is an insolence of rank. A plutocracy
might be even far worse than an aristocracy. Aristocrats have always
had their class vices and their class virtues. They have always been,
as a class, chargeable with licentiousness and gambling. They have,
however, as a class, despised lying and stealing. They have always
pretended to maintain a standard of honor, although the definition and
the code of honor have suffered many changes and shocking
deterioration. The middle class has always abhorred gambling and
licentiousness, but it has not always been strict about truth and
pecuniary fidelity. That there is a code and standard of mercantile
honor which is quite as pure and grand as any military code, is beyond
question, but it has never yet been established and defined by long
usage and the concurrent support of a large and influential society.
The feudal code has, through centuries, bred a high type of men, and
constituted a caste. The mercantile code has not yet done so, but the
wealthy class has attempted to merge itself in or to imitate the feudal
class.

The consequence is, that the wealth-power has been developed, while the
moral and social sanctions by which that power ought to be controlled
have not yet been developed. A plutocracy would be a civil organization
in which the power resides in wealth, in which a man might have
whatever he could buy, in which the rights, interests, and feelings of
those who could not pay would be overridden.

There is a plain tendency of all civilized governments toward
plutocracy. The power of wealth in the English House of Commons has
steadily increased for fifty years. The history of the present French
Republic has shown an extraordinary development of plutocratic spirit
and measures. In the United States many plutocratic doctrines have a
currency which is not granted them anywhere else; that is, a man's
right to have almost anything which he can pay for is more popularly
recognized here than elsewhere. So far the most successful limitation
on plutocracy has come from aristocracy, for the prestige of rank is
still great wherever it exists. The social sanctions of aristocracy
tell with great force on the plutocrats, more especially on their wives
and daughters. It has already resulted that a class of wealthy men is
growing up in regard to whom the old sarcasms of the novels and the
stage about _parvenus_ are entirely