ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political and social implications of ordering that takes place through Jane Austen's and Maria Edgeworth's promotion of professional values. It constitutes a change of subject, as the author leave behind the landed gentleman in need of a professional ethic to explore gentleman-professionals. Edgeworth argues that success is the ultimate standard, by which medical skill and learning, like all other species of merit, are appreciated by mankind. The public and political aspects of Edgeworth's critique of patronage center on the careers of the Falconer family, who abuse the system through their relationship with the Prime Minister, Lord Oldborough, and those of the Percy sons, who make their own way through merit. While in Patronage Edgeworth is satisfied that professional merit is sufficient to triumph against the forces of fashion and corruption, Austen's ending, ambivalent at best, suggests that the forces of fashion are not so easily defeated in England's current embattled state.
