Another long yet very relevant quote from Trollope:
To the Duke’s thinking the maintenance of the aristocracy of the country was second only in importance to the maintenance of the Crown. . . That the wealth of the aristocracy should be recruited from time to time by the wealth of the trade was well enough, – nay, was in the utmost degree desirable; but they among them who were alive to their duty would take care that nothing should be robbed from them by those who were without.
Such were the opinions with regard to his own order of one who was as truly Liberal in his ideas as any man in England, and who had argued out these ideas to their consequences. As by the spread of education and increase of the general well-being every proletaire was brought nearer to a Duke, so by such action would the Duke be brought nearer to a proletaire. Such drawing-nearer of the classes was the object to which all this man’s political action tended. And yet it was a dreadful thing to him.
Think about the ultra-progressive enforcers of diversity and inclusion whose only real goal is to protect their elite status by, among other things, imposing outlandishly complex verbal and behavioral codes. How is this any different from the passionately liberal (in his own description) Duke who polices the boundaries of his social class in the exact same way?
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