Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 199, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1918 — TO END NOBILITY [ARTICLE]

TO END NOBILITY

Canadian Plan Strikes at Very Ancient Institution. x Proposal Is Called Radical and Affect* Titles That Run Back to the Old French Regime. ______ The report from Ottawa that the Canadian nobility Is to be abolished may be the first hews to not a few on that side of the border, as well as to many on this side, that Canada has a nobility. The proposal is called radical, and it certainly does strike at a very ancient Institution, states a writer in Providence Journal. If such a law is enacted in accordance with the recommendations of the government, in thb form of an order in council, “no hereditary title shall hereafter be conferred upon a British subject resident of Canada,” and “appropriate action shall be taken by the government to provide that, after a prescribed period, no title held by a British subject now or hsreafteh ordinarily resident in Canada, shall be recognized as having hereditary effect” The reference presumably is to the titles that have come down from th4f period when the king of France "cosceded his North American possession* in fiefs of duchies, marquisates, counties, viscounties, baronies and other seigniories to the members of the noblesse, military officers and other men of merit admittaS to the noblesse” —according to the old chronicle. And although, as one of the ancient regime has plaintively observed, "democracy has a hatred for natural superiority and endeavors to crush it out,” the titular nobility seem* to have survived among the “bourgeoisie” and “peasantry” of the husky young Dominion. Canada has its college of arms and a number of American citizens who can claim descent from patrician families, or who by feats of arms or other public achievements have shown their merit, have qualified in some of the orders, and are privileged to display the ribbons and wear the court dress of “dark blue, red cord, gilt buttons of the imperial two-headed eagle, cavalry saber, and blue, red or green sash.” At about the time of the Civil war one of these orders invited the membership of “those of the American states disgusted with the vulgarity and tyranny of democracy,” and its rolls - contain the names of General Gordon, General Vance and other distinguished personages of the Southern confederacy. Among the old French titles are Due d’Arkansas and Baro i.et of Novia Scotia.