pulation
of laws has not always been free from bias. The well known words of
Macaulay are worth quoting in this connexion:

There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all
hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had
none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly
receiving members from the people, and constantly sending down
members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a
peer, the younger son of a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of
peers yielded precedence to newly made knights.

The dignity of knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could
by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who could attract
notice by his valour in battle.

... Good blood was indeed held in high respect: but between good
blood and the privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for
our country, no necessary connection.... There was therefore here
no line like that which in some other countries divides the
patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to murmur
at dignities to which his own children might rise. The grandee was
not inclined to insult a class into which his own children must
descend.... Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most
aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in the world;
a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present day, and which
has produced many important moral and political effects[20].

If blood counted for much in distinctions of class, property counted for
more. The original distinction between the "haves" and the "have nots"
has persisted throughout history and is with us to-day.

In the ancient village, no doubt, the distinction was of the simplest.
On the one hand was the man who by force or by his own energy became
possessed of more cattle and more sheep than his fellows; on the other
hand was the man who, in default of such property, was ready and willing
to give his services to the bigger man, whether for wages, or as a
condition of living in the village and sharing in the rights of the
village fields and pastures. Here presumably we have the origin of that
institution of Landlordism which still looms so large in our social
life. In the early days it was probably more a matter of cattle than of
land. The possessor of cattle in the village would hire out a certain
number of