Snobbium Gatherum by William Makepeace Thackeray

WHEN I see the great effect which these papers are producing on an intelligent public, I have a strong hope that before long we shall have a regular Snob department in the newspapers, just as we have the Police Courts and the Court News at present. When a flagrant case of bone-crushing or Poor-law abuse occurs in the world, who so eloquent as THE TIMES to point it out? When a gross instance of Snobbishness happens, why should not the indignant journalist call the public attention to that delinquency too?

How, for instance, could that wonderful case of the Earl of Mangelwurzel and his brother be examined in the Snobbish point of view? Let alone the hectoring, the bullying, the vapouring, the bad grammar, the mutual recriminations, lie-givings, challenges, retractations, which abound in the fraternal dispute -- put out of the question these points as concerning the individual nobleman and his relative, with whose personal affairs we have nothing to do -- and consider how intimately corrupt, how habitually grovelling and mean, how entirely Snobbish in a word, a whole county must be which can find no better chiefs or leaders than these two gentlemen. 'We don't want,' the great county of Mangelwurzelshire seems to say, 'that a man should be able to write good grammar; or that he should keep a Christian tongue in his head; or that he should have the commonest decency of temper, or even a fair share of good sense, in order to represent us in Parliament.