mock-modesty stakes was a professor in Victorian Oxford whornonce casually remarked, “Quite the nicest emperor I know isrnGermany.”rnPerhaps, at long last, someone should give thought to thernhighly antifactual question of what it would be like to livernwithout elites. It would be a more ignorant worid, presumably,rnand perhaps dangerously so. Elites are highly self-educative, afterrnall. Bankers, it is said, lunch with bankers, and on the naturalrnassumption that they talk about money, the money marketrncould only be more ignorantly conducted if they did not lunch.rnCountry clubs, similariy, spread gossip, and gossip is a sort ofrnknowledge, sometimes an indispensable sort. Universities dorntoo, and whenever I teach in the United States, there is a departmentalrnlunch where business and gossip are talked. Thernbeginner has to tread carefully here. Years ago, in a Midwesternrnuniversity, I blundered into a daily lunch for professors of Americanrnliterature. They were entirely welcoming to a newcomerrnfrom England, and my innocent mistake taught me a good dealrnabout American literature and how it is studied. But it was arnmistake, and after a week or two I corrected it and moved to arntable where Shakespeare and Dickens were the conversationalrnfare, not to mention the personal shortcomings of the departmentrnchairman. Plainly I was lucky. Worse things can happen.rnThere is a harrowing story about someone attending an academicrnconference in Chicago who found himself frozen out ofrna circle entirely composed of experts on the Cantos of EzrarnPound. No doubt elitism can go too far. No doubt an expert onrnthe cantos should sometimes talk to people who have neverrnread them. No doubt, for that matter, he should talk tornstrangers on the bus. In fact, it is only by talking to people outsidernyour elite, which may be as modest as an academic departmentrnor as grand as the Supreme Court, that you realize howrnfortunate you are to belong to an elite at all.rnBut suppose the rich did choose tornbe selfish and to spend only onrnthemselves and their families. Howrnharmful, in sober truth, is a rich andrnselfish elite?rnThere are some assumptions too lightly made here. One isrnthat elites are necessarily cozy and protective. In fact, they canrneasily be internecine, and a world without them would in allrnlikelihood be a flabby and uncritical world. A banker learnsrnwhat he does wrong, among other things, when he lunches withrnhis colleagues. Professors, too, are not slow to cavil. All the 40rnmembers of the French Academy that Richelieu founded inrn1635 have had to wait to get in until somebody died, in a classicrninstance of a self-perpetuating elite, and were probably votedrndown at their first attempts; so that the whole experience ofrnbecoming an academician can be depended on to wear yourndown and hone you up. Elites are not in their nature complacent;rnand if, by some unimaginable act of policy, their competitivernedge were removed, whether in clubs, academies, or thernhigher professions, it is not just snobbery that would diminishrnbut effort too. That would have its cost. Money would bernworth less, teaching would decline, the justice of courts wouldrnprobably grow more inept and less pure. If status mattered less,rnwealth would come to matter more. I wonder if anti-elitistsrnhave contemplated these probabilities and what they wouldrncost in terms of justice and creativity. Money, to be sure, in thernworld there is, can buy entry into an elite. But perhaps that isrnone of the best ways to spend it.rnIt is curious that, with so much evidence to the contrary, it isrnstill widely assumed that the desire to be rich is never anythingrnmore nor less than a vulgar greed for material things. Europeansrnare perhaps easier victims of this illusion than Americans,rnwhose history has trained them to admire the parvenu and tornunderstand what, as an outsider, I venture to call the GreatrnAmerican Truth: that it is more honorable to create wealth thanrnto inherit it. American private wealth is often newer than European,rnits economic dynasties of shorter lineage, and theirrnsheer newness, as the television soap called Dynasty used tornprove nightly, understandably a source of fascination, of an envyrnunmarked by rejection. New wealth in Europe, by contrast,rnis still sullied by the taint of vulgarity. Perhaps its ultimate symbolrnwas the luxury yacht from which Robert Maxwell drownedrna few years ago. Maxwell was a refugee from Czechoslovakia, asrnit was then called. He arrived in England as a penniless teenagerrnin 1939, made millions after the war, and was briefly a memberrnof the House of Commons; so his career illustrates the fundamentalrnprinciple of the open elite and how to break into it.rnHis social manners and business ethics did not endear him, itrnmust be said, to the nation he chose to make his own, evenrnthough he gave widely to charity. No one would accuse the laternCaptain Maxwell of having become rich in order to be charitable.rnBut he was, and there are those who get rich, among otherrnreasons, in order to give it away. Odd, in the rich nations of thernWest that owe so much to private munificence, that the possibilityrnis so little regarded. In 1923, for example, John PierpontrnMorgan, Jr., handed over a great library in New York with its artrntreasures to a trust, and his portrait hangs there on the wallrnwearing the gown of an honorary Cambridge doctorate. So,rnlike many a banker, he belonged to more elites than one, andrnwas proud of it.rnBut suppose the rich did choose to be selfish and to spendrnonly on themselves and their families. How harmful, in soberrntruth, is a rich and selfish elite? Their lawful enterprises may bernpresumed to have profited the economy as a whole. They payrntaxes that fund welfare. They give employment; and if theyrncollect works of art, they hinder their dispersal or destruction.rnRich collectors, it is said, are egotists who seek their own aggrandizement.rnLong may they do so. It is because they seek itrnthat our public collections are what they are. To enter the FrickrnMuseum in Manhattan is to praise the name of Henry ClayrnFrick. Pierpont Morgan, as every visitor to 36th Street mustrnknow, did not waste his substance. Tax not the royal saint withrnvain expense, as Wordsworth once wrote, contemplating whatrnKing Henry VI had achieved in glass and stone at King’s Collegernchapel in Cambridge. If this is how elites behave, if this isrnwhat comes of liking cream, perhaps elitism is something morernthan inevitable. It is a blessing.rn