PART V.

OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS

DISTINCTIONS.

CHAPTER I.

AN ARISTOCRACY AND HEREDITARY
PEERAGE.

THE Peerage of this and other countries is indebted for its origin to circumstances which it has long survived; and now that it is placed in another and entirely different position from that in which it once stood, it is natural to suppose that it may require considerable modification and adaptation, to fit it for a continued and useful existence.

At a time when, throughout Europe, force was the arbiter of every question of right and wrong, Peers were the wielders and depositaries of force. Land, which both gave the power and limited it, was granted to them, on a condition that they should agree to club their force with that of the chief of all, when his will required its exer

tion.

The authority over possessors of land held on this sole condition, could never be so firmly fixed as to reduce them to an entire submission to the wishes of their suzerain: so they were not only commanded, they were also persuaded and consulted; and in order to this, the great holders of land, on occasion of any measure which required their aid for its execution, were called together-summoned by the King to appear at a particular time and place, to assist him by their aid and counsel. Hence a House of Peers.

What were the People all this time?-Retainers, small

holders dependent on greater, bordars, cottars, villeins; in short, they were the simple instruments of their superiorslinks of a chain, powerless in themselves, and moveable only in the order in which they were bound together.

There was, however, one other element of power-the Church; a power partly of opinion, and partly arising out of the possession of the arts of learning, which were found convenient, and ultimately necessary, to the wielders of physical force. The priest held the pen as well as the keys of heaven.

Sometimes these two forces, the physical and the spiritual, are seen in opposition; but they early found it their mutual interest to proceed in unison, and share the spoils of the country they ruled.

But all is changed: the links of the chain are broken, the metal is re-cast: the feudal system remains only in the prejudices it has left behind, and in a few forms and some ancient institutions, prejudices, however, deeply rooted, and which it will require time to eradicate, and institutions and formal distinctions which, where they interfere with the well-being of the people, must be gradually either destroyed or modified. One of these institutions is the House of Lords.

The reign of force gradually yielded to that of opinion, and the acquirements of the priesthood became general accomplishments: nothing was left them but the other world, which they did not seem to value except as a means of influence in this. But the manner in which this change was brought about is important: its history throws a flood of light upon the nature and character of modern institutions.

Various causes split the possessions of the great feudal holders of land, and made such a division of ranks among themselves, that they became distinguished as Greater and Lesser Barons. With smaller possessions came smaller consequence; and while the King continued to summon the Greater Barons to his Council himself, he deputed the duty of summoning the Lesser Barons to the Sheriffs of each county; and as these Lesser Barons still continued to grow more numerous as well as smaller, it ultimately came to pass that two were chosen to represent the Lesser Barons, under the denomination of Knights of the Shire. Contemporaneously with this change, which was one

of decomposition, another took place, which was one full of life and vigour. The institutions of feudality permitted men, on paying a certain tribute to their seigneur, to assemble together in towns, and to pursue their respective occupations for their own benefit: on these towns were conferred charters and privileges, both for their better regulation, and with a view to draw from them a part of that wealth which it is the nature of commerce to accumulate. The possession of wealth and the payment of money always end in conferring upon the possessor an advantage. These towns and boroughs and cities sent their delegates to agree as to the sum they were to pay; and if a greater amount than usual were demanded, it was a natural consequence that they should be told of the object, and consulted as to its necessity.

The Greater and the Lesser Barons and the delegates of the towns having become a very numerous body, and their ranks and offices being different, a natural separation took place. The greater barons have continued to form the House of Lords; and the Lesser Barons, as sent up by the Sheriffs, together with the delegates of the towns, the House of Commons.

The Peers were thus set apart for themselves; the Commons became the representatives of the people. The Peers have remained Peers, but the Commons have been aggrandized with the body of which they were the index. At the time the division took place, it might be an equal one; there is no proportion now between a chamber of Lords and the People-the stupendous wealth and the wide-spread intelligence-in fact, all that which makes a state -exists in or springs out of that vast collection of organization which has germinated from the poor seeds sown by the villeins and thralls, the cottars and burgesses, of a time of ignorance and barbarism.-Spectator.

Our young nobility are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury. As soon as their years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among

*It is not meant here that the Commons have made the People, but the People the Commons, in spite of all sinister interference. In ancient times as well as modern, the Commons have conspired with the Peers to keep down the People; as in their endeavours to perpetuate the system of villeinage. Vide

5 RIc. II. Rot. Parl.

lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution, merely for the sake of money, whom they hate and despise. The productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means, the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. A weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy, robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind are parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dulness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride. Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted, repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all our possessions without appeal.-Swift.

That which is called aristocracy in some countries, and nobility in others, arose out of the governments founded in conquest. It was originally a military order, for the purpose of supporting military government (for such were all governments founded upon conquest); and to keep a succession of this order for the purpose for which it was established, all the younger branches of those families were disinherited, and the law of primogenitureship set up.

The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law. It is a law against every law of nature, and nature herself calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children, five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast. As every thing which is out of nature in man, affects more or less the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the aristocracy disown (which are all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans upon a parish, to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places, in governments and courts, are created at the expense of the public, to maintain them.

With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in one line, and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents to their children, and children to their parents-relations to each other, and man to society-and to exterminate the monster, Aristocracy, root and branch, the French constitution has destroyed the law of primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster, and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.

Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view. We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it before, or behind, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is still a monster. In France, aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance, than what it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary legislators. It was not a "corporation of aristocracy,"-for such I have heard M. de la Fayette describe an English house of peers. Let us then examine the grounds upon which the French constitution has resolved against having such a house in France.

Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice. Secondly, because there is an unnatural unfitness in aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life by trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice and honour can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or doles out to them some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift? Thirdly, because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat. Fourthly, because a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by any body. Fifthly, because it is continuing the uncivilized principle of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having a property in