it is _credit_. The Pope himself is scarcely more concerned
to retain the confidence of the faithful than to make his creditors
believe in his own good faith. If in times past it was the guilty debt
of the world which was lamented, now it is the financial debts of the
world which arouse dismay. Formerly it was the Last Day which was
prophesied; now it is the [Greek: seisachtheia] the great repudiation,
the universal bankruptcy of the nations, which will one day happen;
although the prophet, in this as in the other case, entertains a firm
hope that he will not live to see it himself.

From an ethical and a rational point of view, the _right of
possession_ rests upon an incomparably better foundation than the
_right of birth_; nevertheless, the right of possession is allied with
the right of birth and has come to be part and parcel of it, so that
it would hardly be possible to abolish the right of birth without
endangering the right of possession. The reason of this is that most
of what a man possesses he inherited, and therefore holds by a kind of
right of birth; just as the old nobility bear the names only of their
hereditary estates, and by the use of those names do no more than give
expression to the fact that they own the estates. Accordingly all
owners of property, if instead of being envious they were wise, ought
also to support the maintenance of the rights of birth.

The existence of a nobility has, then, a double advantage: it helps to
maintain on the one hand the rights of possession, and on the other
the right of birth belonging to the king. For the king is the first
nobleman in the country, and, as a general rule, he treats the
nobility as his humble relations, and regards them quite otherwise
than the commoners, however trusty and well-beloved. It is quite
natural, too, that he should have more confidence in those whose
ancestors were mostly the first ministers, and always the immediate
associates, of his own. A nobleman, therefore, appeals with reason
to the name he bears, when on the occurrence of anything to rouse
distrust he repeats his assurance of fidelity and service to the king.
A man's character, as my readers are aware, assuredly comes to him
from his father. It is a narrow-minded and ridiculous thing not to
consider whose son a man is.

FREE-WILL AND FATALISM.

No thoughtful man can have any doubt, after the conclusions reached in
my prize-essay on _Moral Freedom_, that such freedom is