“O Mary!” I exclaimed, “how dreadful it would be, if Frank were to become a Benedictine monk.”
“What else do you want him to do?”
“Why, live at home, of course, as an English country gentleman should do, marry, and bring up a son to rule after him.”
“What a thorough conservative you are, Jane!” said Mary with a smile.
“I am not so sure of that. I have a dash of the liberal in me at times. But I do love the dirty acres; and I like to see them [pg 349] going down from father to son without a break.”
“You are right there. It is that permanence which is the back-bone of England. I do not believe in the lasting stability of any country where there is a perpetual and ever-recurring division of property. What a man has should always survive what a man is, in a sufficiently substantial form to make the cradle of a future destiny. And where no one is sure of inheriting a large fortune with the large leisure that it secures, it tends to make all men equally mercenary. There should always be a class apart who have no need to fret about making money, but can afford to spend it.”
“But what if they do not spend it well?”
“That is an answer which in one shape or another you may make to the laying down of any principle. What if it be abused? It does not prove the falsity of the principle, but only once more calls to mind the truism that everything is open to abuse.”
“I suppose you think there are so many objects on which wealth may be advantageously expended that it is well to have an hereditary body whose business it is to do so.”
“Yes; and I would certainly include the cultivation of hot-house grapes, and the elysium of fat porkers who are washed and combed twice a week. It is every man's business to produce the best he can of whatever he has in hand, including pineapples and pigs.”