e each of them
satisfied of the equity and irresistible principle of their ascendancy,
when the vulgar population felt convinced that passive obedience was
entailed on them from their birth, when we were in a manner but just
emancipated (illusorily emancipated!) from the state of serfs and
villains. But a memorable melioration of the state of man will carry
some degree of conviction to the hearts of all. The most corrupt will
be made doubtful: many who had not gone so far in ill, will desert the
banners of oppression.

We see this already. What a shock was propagated through the island,
when, the other day, a large proprietor, turning a considerable cluster
of his tenants out of the houses and lands they occupied, because they
refused to vote for a representative in parliament implicitly as he bade
them, urged in his own justification, "Shall I not do what I will with
my own?" This was all sound morals and divinity perhaps at the period
of his birth. Nobody disputed it; or, if any one did, he was set down
by the oracles of the vicinage as a crackbrained visionary. This man, so
confident in his own prerogatives, had slept for the last twenty years,
and awoke totally unconscious of what had been going on in almost every
corner of Europe in the interval. A few more such examples; and so broad
and sweeping an assumption will no more be heard of, and it will remain
in the records of history, as a thing for the reality of which we have
sufficient evidence, but which common sense repudiates, and which seems
to demand from us a certain degree of credulity to induce us to admit
that it had ever been.

The manners of society are by no means so unchanged and unalterable
as many men suppose. It is here, as in the case of excessive drinking,
which I had lately occasion to mention(36). In rude and barbarous
times men of the highest circles piqued themselves upon their power of
swallowing excessive potations, and found pleasure in it. It is in this
as in so many other vices, we follow implicitly where our elders lead
the way. But the rage of drinking is now gone by; and you will with
difficulty find a company of persons of respectable appearance, who
assemble round a table for the purpose of making beasts of themselves.
Formerly it was their glory; now, if any man unhappily retains the
weakness, he hides it from his equals, as he would a loathsome disease.
The same thing will happen as to parliamentary corruption, and the
absolute a