baronet in 1834; in 1858, when he was President of the Royal Society, there was some talk of his being made a peer, and _Punch_ in December of that year bitterly attacked the influences and prejudices which he believed were effectual in preventing the bestowal of the honour. [Illustration: EXCLUSIVENESS HOST: "Nice party, ain't it, Major Le Spunger? 'Igh and low, rich and poor--_most_ people are welcome to _this_ 'ouse! This is 'Liberty 'All,' _this_ is! No false pride or 'umbug about _me_! I'm a self-made man, _I_ am!" THE MAJOR: "Very nice party, indeed, Mr. Shoddy! How proud your father and mother must feel! Are _they_ here?" HOST: "Well, no! 'Ang it all, you know, one _must_ draw the line somewhere!"] [Sidenote: _Peers and Commerce_] The reign of the old nobility, however, was not merely threatened by outspoken criticism. The situation crystallized in the title of the play, _New Men and Old Acres_, was already a real thing; prosperous cotton-spinners were beginning to buy estates; by 1865 _Punch_ was contrasting the new representatives of the landed interest with their feudal predecessors--very much to the disadvantage of the former--and by the 'seventies the contrast was a favourite theme of Du Maurier. Simultaneously the converse tendency of the aristocracy to go into trade is noted, but with little sympathy. Thus we find in 1863 the prospectus of the Noble Hotel-keepers' Association (Limited) headed by a list of parasitic peers, including the Duke of Dangleton, the Duke of Dawdleton, the Duke of Diddleton, the Marquis of Hardupton, the Earl of Toadington, Viscount Ortolan, the Lord Verisopht, Sir Lionel Rattlecash, Bart., and so on; and a double-page cartoon shows the scene in the coffee-room of one of the Hotels in which "gents" of different types are being waited on by coronetted and bewhiskered peers. Greed rather than business capacity is indicated as the characteristic of the new recruits of commerce, and the annals of the last fifty years have furnished disastrous and even tragic examples of the results of this titled invasion of the City. Experience has shown that on the whole it is safer to gain a peerage by success in commerce than to exploit a peerage as a short cut to making money. [Illustration: AN INVESTMENT "Tell me, my dear, who's that little man they all seem so dotingly fond of?" "_That_, Uncle? Oh, that's Lord Alberic Lackland!" "Well, he's not much to look at!" "No, poor fellow! But he's awfully hard up, and Mamma always likes to have a lord at her dances, so Papa gives him ten guineas to come--that is, _lends_ it, you know--and a guinea extra for every time my brother Bob calls him _Ricky_!"]