I am going to attempt something that might strike you as eccentric. Over the next 750 words, I am going to seek to persuade you, a citizen of the world’s greatest republic, that the United Kingdom is wrong to phase out its last hereditary peers — that is, the last 92 members of the House of Lords who owe their places to being their fathers’ sons.

Many of my American friends have what I have always found a flattering view of Britain, seeing us as a country of dowager duchesses, curtseying maids, and steam trains that carry excited children to boarding schools. In reality, we tend to be rougher and ruder than our American cousins. But one of the few ways in which we conform to stereotype is in being only one of two places in the world (along with Lesotho) to have a hereditary element in our legislature.