eating even
the free life of the Colonies. If I were an Australian or a Canadian I
would fight this hateful taint of the old world with all my might. I would
make it a criminal offence for a Colonial to accept a title. As for us, I
know only one remedy. It is to make a title a money transaction. Let us
have a tariff for titles. If American millionaires, like Lord Astor, want
them let them pay for them at the market rate. It would be at least a more
wholesome method than the present system. And it would bring the whole
imposture into contempt. Nobody would have a title when everybody knew what
he had paid for it. It is a poor way of getting rid of the abomination
compared with the French way, but then we are some centuries behind the
French people in these things.

ON THE DISLIKE OF LAWYERS

"I have spent a large part of my life in advising business men how to get
out of their difficulties," said Mr. Asquith the other day. It was a
statement wrung from him by a deputation which was inflicting on him the
familiar talk about lawyers and the need of "business men" to run our
affairs. I suppose there has been no more banal cackle in this war than the
cackle about a "business Government" and the pestilence of lawyers.

I am not a lawyer, and have no particular affection for lawyers. I keep out
of their professional reach as much as possible. But it is as foolish to
ban them as a class as it would be to assume that a grocer or a tailor is a
great statesman because he is a successful grocer or tailor. Running an
empire is quite a different job from running a grocery establishment, and
it is folly to suppose that because a man has been successful in buying and
selling bacon and butter for his own profit he can _ipso facto_ govern a
nation with wisdom and prudence. Who are the most distinguished grocers of
to-day? They are Lord Devonport and Sir Thomas Lipton. Both excellent men,
I've no doubt. But would you like to hand over the Premiership to either of
them? Now, would you?

The great statesman has to prove himself a great statesman just as the
great grocer has to prove himself a great grocer. He has to prove it by the
qualities of statesmanship exercised in the full glare of publicity. If the
grocer makes a howler in his trade the world knows nothing about it. If the
statesman makes a howler all the world knows about it. He has to emerge to
the front in the most public of all battles, and you may be sure that no
one