VALUE OF TITLES.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18184, 22 September 1924, Page 14

VALUE OF TITLES.

CASES IN" THE ENGLISH PEERAGE. The question of the value of a title, which has been under discussion in the British. Courts recently, has an amus l ing aneedotage of its own, declares a correspondent of the " Manchester Guardian." .Views differ, of course. One man may think £-10,000 a fair estimate of the value of a knighthood, but there was a worthy gentleman of the Victorian era who took an opposite view. He was offered a knighthood for certain services, and declined it, explaining to his friends that the first result of such an honour was that ail your tradesmen put up their' price's. There was the earl who declined a further step in the peerage on the ground that a marquisate. would make his younger sons "lords," and that, as they had to make their own way in the world, the courtesy title would be a drag on their advancement. It should be added that he flourished in the seventeenth century. There was the opposite, ease, in which it appeared that a rise in the peerage might have a definite cash value. A poor baron was offered an earldom, and was for declining till the case was put before him by a discerning friend of the higher degree. "Take it," was the advice, "and your daughters will become 'ladies,' and will stand a much better chance in the marriage market." He took the advice, and one daughter became a countess, the other a viscountess.

The Irish peerage has many examples of the bartering of a vote for a peerage, and Mr Swift MacNe'ill once drew up a remarkable record of the values assigned to the various Irish peerages, which multiplied bo greatly at the time of the Union. There is a story that one Irish peerage was offered and ac'.epted as "compensation" to a disappointed gentleman who desired to use part of a royal park as carriagedrive. It is' almost a relief to turn to Harcourt's agonised petitions to Gladstone to be spared a knighthood on becoming Solicitor-General. "It is necessary," said Gladstone, "to keep up the character of the knighthood." "In that case," retorted Hareourt. "I can tell you a much better plan. Accept a knighthood yourself."