is put up,
and the only one that can never fail from the want of means. It is the
interest, not of the policy, but of the existence of man, and when it
ceases, he must cease to be.

No other interest in a nation stands on the same united support.
Commerce, manufactures, arts, sciences, and everything else, compared
with this, are supported but in parts. Their prosperity or their decay
has not the same universal influence. When the valleys laugh and sing,
it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoice. It is a
prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything
else.

Why then, does Mr. Burke talk of his house of peers as the pillar of
the landed interest? Were that pillar to sink into the earth, the same
landed property would continue, and the same ploughing, sowing, and
reaping would go on. The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the
land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and
when compared with the active world are the drones, a seraglio of males,
who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy
enjoyment.

Mr. Burke, in his first essay, called aristocracy "the Corinthian
capital of polished society." Towards completing the figure, he has now
added the pillar; but still the base is wanting; and whenever a nation
choose to act a Samson, not blind, but bold, down will go the temple of
Dagon, the Lords and the Philistines.

If a house of legislation is to be composed of men of one class, for
the purpose of protecting a distinct interest, all the other interests
should have the same. The inequality, as well as the burthen of
taxation, arises from admitting it in one case, and not in all. Had
there been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws; or a house
of merchants and manufacturers, the taxes had neither been so unequal
nor so excessive. It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of
those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that
it has raged without a check.

Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being
thrown on articles of consumption, than they are eased by warding it
from landed property, for the following reasons:

First, They consume more of the productive taxable articles, in
proportion to their property, than those of large estates.

Secondly, Their residence is chiefly in towns, and their property in
houses; and the increase of the poor-rates, occasio