, while property is power; nor by any means to be wished, while
the least notion exists of the method by which the spirit of liberty
acts, and of the means by which it is preserved. If any particular
peers, by their uniform, upright, constitutional conduct, by their
public and their private virtues, have acquired an influence in the
country; the people, on whose favor that influence depends, and from
whom it arose, will never be duped into an opinion, that such greatness
in a peer is the despotism of an aristocracy, when they know and feel it
to be the effect and pledge of their own importance.

I am no friend to aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that word
is usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on the
supposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if
it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other
form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever
my dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, on
the influence of a court, and of a peerage, is not, which of the two
dangers is the more eligible, but which is the more imminent. He is but
a poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of peers, far
from supporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but
too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, and to run
headlong into an abject servitude. Would to God it were true, that the
fault of our peers were too much spirit. It is worthy of some
observation that these gentlemen, so jealous of aristocracy, make no
complaints of the power of those peers (neither few nor inconsiderable)
who are always in the train of a court, and whose whole weight must be
considered as a portion of the settled influence of the crown. This is
all safe and right; but if some peers (I am very sorry they are not as
many as they ought to be) set themselves, in the great concern of peers
and commons, against a back-stairs influence and clandestine government,
then the alarm begins; then the constitution is in danger of being
forced into an aristocracy.

I rest a little the longer on this court topic, because it was much
insisted upon at the time of the great change, and has been since
frequently revived by many of the agents of that party; for, whilst they
are terrifying the great and opulent with the horrors of mob-government,
they are by other managers attempting (though hitherto with little
succe