It sounds like ship-money come again, but it may not be so intended.
Human nature being what it is, I suppose we must expect to drift into monarchy by and by.

It is a saddening thought, but we cannot change our nature: we are all alike, we human beings; and in our blood and bone, and ineradicable, we carry the seeds out of which monarchies and aristocracies are grown: worship of gauds, titles, distinctions, power.
We have to worship these things and their possessors, we are all born so, and we cannot help it.

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content.

In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways.

In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.