In reverencing wealth we reverence not a man, but an appendix to a man; in reverencing inherited nobility, we reverence the probable possession of a great faculty--the faculty of bringing out what is in one.
This quote distinguishes between reverence for wealth and nobility, suggesting that the latter implies a greater potential for talent.
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More from Walter Bagehot
If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.
But all men heed great results, and a change of Government is a great result.
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