The Papists themselves are debarred from
no honour (outside Ireland) save the Lord Chancellorship. Monkeys, who
are responsible for no persecutions in the past, whose religion presents
no insult or outrage to our common reason, and who differ little from
ourselves in their general practice of life and thought, _are debarred
from all_!
A Monkey may not be a Member of Parliament, a Civil Servant, an officer
in either Service, no, not even in the Territorial Army. It is doubtful
whether he may hold a commission for the peace. True, there is no statute
upon the subject, and the rural magistracy is perhaps the freest and most
open of all our offices, and the least restricted by artificial barriers
of examination or test; nevertheless, it is the considered opinion of the
best legal authorities that no Monkey could sit upon the Bench, and in any
case the discussion is purely academic, for it is difficult to believe
that any Lord-Lieutenant, under the ridiculous anachronism of our present
Constitution, would nominate a Monkey to such a position--unless (which is
by law impossible) he should be heir to an owner of an estate in land.
Nor is this all. The mention of unpaid posts recalls the damning truth
that all honorary positions in the Diplomatic Service, including even the
purely formal stage in the Foreign Office, are closed to the Monkey; the
very Court sinecures, which admittedly require no talents, are denied to
our Simian fellow-creatures, if not by law at least by custom and in
practice.
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