 Prima facie it is strange to find Rehberg, a burgher whose talents were thwarted by the aristocracy, to be such an advocate of its preservation.  It seems as if he were a humble and obedient servant in his politics as well as in his bureacratic work.  Yet aristocracy was fundamental to Rehberg's whole political outlook. Aristocracy was natural for him, given his insistence that rights and obligations are inherited, handed down from one generation to another (see below, section 4).  More importantly, aristocracy was his bulwark against major fears: democracy and egalitarianism.  The chief danger to democracy is that it could lead to ochlocracy, government by the mob.  It was axiomatic for Rehberg that all government had to be meritocratic, and he could see no way of ensuring this principle in a radically democratic and equalitarian society.  He believed firmly in the value of a social and political hierarchy, the importance of maintaining class differences between  people.[36]  Class differences were in his view both desirable and inevitable: desirable, because they allow merit to rule; and inevitable, because people have more or less merit or talent according to circumstances, temperament and birth.  