of life itself. Every perfon in your country, in a fituation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is difgraced and degraded, and can entertain no fenfation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation will quickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility will refemble the artificers and clowns, and money - jobbers, ufurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, fometimes their mafters. Believe me, Sir, thofe who attempt to level, never equalize. In all focieties, confifting of various defcriptions of citizens, fome defcription must be uppermoft. The levellers there-. fore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of fociety, by fetting up in the air what the folidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The affociations of taylors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for inftance) is compofed, cannot be equal to the fituation, into which, by the worst of ufurpations, an ufurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you atrempt to force them.

The chancellor of France at the opening of the states, faid, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all occupations were honourable. If he meant only, that no honest employment was difgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. But in afferting, that any thing is honourable, we imply fome diftinction in its favour. The occupation of an hair-dreffer, or of a working tallowchandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any

perfon-to fay nothing of a number of other more fervile employments. Such defcriptions of men ought not to fuffer oppreffion from the state ; but the state suffers oppreffion, if fuch as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature *.

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that fophiftical captious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and exceptions, which reason will prefume to be included in all the general propofitions which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine, that I wish to confine power, authority, and diftinction to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for govern

* Ecclefiafticus, chap. xxxviii. verse 24, 25. "The wif"dom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: " and he that hath little bufinefs fhall become wise."—" How

can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glo"rieth in the goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in "their labours; and whofe talk is of bullocks?"

Ver. 27. "So every carpenter and work-mafter that labour"eth night and day." &c.

Ver. 33. They fhall not be fought for in public counsel, "nor fit high in the congregation: They fhall not fit on the judges feat, nor understand the fentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment, and they shall "not be found where parables are spoken."

Ver. 34 "But they will maintain the state of the world." I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican church (till lately) has confidered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am fure it contains a great deal of fenfe, and truth,

ment,

ment, but virtue and wisdom, actual or prefumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever ftate, condition, profeffion or trade, the paffport of Heaven to human place and honour. Woe to the country which would madly and impioufly reject the fervice of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to ferve it; and would condemn to obfcurity every thing formed to diffuse luftre and glory around a flate. Woe to that country too, that paffing into the oppofite extreme, confiders a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a fordid mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command. Every thing ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the fpirit of fortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government converfant in extenfive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to felect the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to fay, that the road to eminence and power, from obfcure condition, ought not to be made too eafy, nor a thing too much of courfe. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through fome fort of probation. The temple of honour ought to be feated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered too, that virtue is never tried but by fone difficulty, and fome ftruggle.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a ftate, that does not reprefent its ability, as

well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be fafe from the invafions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the reprefentation. It must be reprefented too in great maffes of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic effence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquifition and confervation, is to be unequal. The great maffes therefore which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the poffibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the leffer properties in all their gradations. fame quantity of property, which is by the natural courfe of things divided among many, has not the fame operation. Its defenfive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffufion each man's portion is lefs than what, in the eagerness of his defires, he may flatter himself to obtain by diffipating the accumulations of others. The plunder of the few would indeed give but a fhare inconceivably small in the diftribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and thofe who lead them to rapine, never intend this diftribution.

The

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of fociety itself. It makes our weakness fubfervient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The poffeffors of family wealth, and of the distinction which

attends

attends hereditary poffeffion (as most concerned in it) are the natural fecurities for this tranfmiffsion. With us, the houfe of peers is formed upon this. principle. It is wholly compofed of hereditary property and hereditary diftinction; and made therefore the third of the legislature; and in the laft event, the fole judge of all property in all its fubdivifions. The house of commons too, though not neceffarily, yet in fact, is always fo composed in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, and they have their chance of being amongst the best, they are at the very worst, the ballaft in the veffel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping fycophants, and the blind abject admirers of power, they are too rafhly flighted in fhallow fpeculations of the petulant, affuming, fhort-fighted coxcombs of philofophy. Some decent regulated pre-eminence, fome preference (not exclufive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.

It is faid, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True; if the conftitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic. This fort of difcourfe does well enough with the lamp-poft for its fecond to men who may reafon calmly, it is ridicu lous. The will of the many, and their intereit, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of five hundred country attornies

and