In sovereigns, whom our old writers quaintly term 'fountains of honour,' is vested the right of conferring dignities, and it is by a judicious use of this prerogative that the balance of a limited monarchy is properly preserved. Were there no difference of grade amongst the subjects of a state, the monarch would be too far removed from his people, and mutual disgust or indifference would be the consequence. A well-constituted peerage serves as a connecting link between the sovereign and the great body of his subjects, and may therefore be regarded, next to the loyal affections of the people, the firmest prop of the throne. I know that, in these utilitarian days, this position is frequently and fiercely controverted, and that probably by many who have never read the following eloquent passage of Burke--a passage which though _decies repetita placebit_, and which I therefore introduce without apology: "To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. _Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus_ was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. _It is a sour, malignant, and envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour._ I do not like to see anything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land."[239] It is a fact not perhaps generally known that poverty formerly disqualified a peer from holding his dignity. In the reign of Edward IV, George Neville, duke of Bedford, was degraded on this account by Act of Parliament. The reason for this measure is given in the preamble of the Act: "Because it [poverty] causeth great extortion, &c. to the great trouble of all such countries where the estate [of the impoverished lord] happens to be."[240] Happily for some of its members, no such prerogative is now exercised by Parliament.