This is what the clerical party has gained.
Nothing can equal the disdain with which the prelates the princes, the foreigners of condition, and even the footmen at Rome, judge the middle class, of _mezzo ceto_.
The prelate has his reasons.

If he be a minister, he sees in his offices some hundred clerks, belonging to the middle class.

He knows that these active and intelligent, but underpaid men, are for the most part obliged to eke out a livelihood by secretly following some other occupation: one keeps the books of a land-steward, another those of a Jew.

Whose fault is it?
They well know that neither excellence of character nor length of service are carried to the credit of the civil functionary, and that, after having earned advancement, he will be obliged either to ask it himself as a favour, or to employ the intercession of his wife.

It is not these poor men whom we should despise, but the dignitaries in violet stockings who impose the burden upon them.
Should Monsignore be a judge of a superior tribunal, of the _Sacra Rota_ for instance, he need know nothing about the law.