we see the same eagerness in other nations of the Continent, who cannot
be accused (as wholes) of that weakness. The fact is, a Government
place, or a Government decoration, cross, ribbon, or what not, is, in a
country where self-government is unknown or dead, the only method, save
literary fame, which is left to men in order to assert themselves either
to themselves or their fellow-men.

A British or American shopkeeper or farmer asks nothing of his
Government. He can, if he chooses, be elected to some local office
(generally unsalaried) by the votes of his fellow-citizens. But that is
his right, and adds nothing to his respectability. The test of that
latter, in a country where all honest callings are equally honourable, is
the amount of money he can make; and a very sound practical test that is,
in a country where intellect and capital are free. Beyond that, he is
what he is, and wishes to be no more, save what he can make himself. He
has his rights, guaranteed by law and public opinion; and as long as he
stands within them, and (as he well phrases it) behaves like a gentleman,
he considers himself as good as any man; and so he is. But under the
bureaucratic Regime of the Continent, if a man had not "something by
command of the king," he was nothing; and something he naturally wished
to be, even by means of a Government which he disliked and despised. So
in France, where innumerable petty posts were regular articles of sale,
anyone, it seems, who had saved a little money, found it most profitable
to invest it in a beadledom of some kind--to the great detriment of the
country, for he thus withdrew his capital from trade; but to his own
clear gain, for he thereby purchased some immunity from public burdens,
and, as it were, compounded once and for all for his taxes. The petty
German princes, it seems, followed the example of France, and sold their
little beadledoms likewise; but even where offices were not sold, they
must be obtained by any and every means, by everyone who desired not to