There is a third idolatry from which that of rank preserves us, and perhaps it is the worst of any⁠—that of office. The basest deity is a subordinate employee, and yet just now in civilised Governments it is the commonest. In France and all the best of the Continent it rules like a superstition. It is to no purpose that you prove that the pay of petty officials is smaller than mercantile pay, that their work is more monotonous than mercantile work; that their mind is less useful and their life more tame. They are still thought to be greater and better. They are decorés