t mass of landed property held by the crown, and, by a maxim of
the French law, held unalienably, the vast estates of the ecclesiastic
corporations,--all these had kept the landed and moneyed interests more
separated in France, less miscible, and the owners of the two distinct
species of property not so well disposed to each other as they are in
this country.

The moneyed property was long looked on with rather an evil eye by the
people. They saw it connected with their distresses, and aggravating
them. It was no less envied by the old landed interests,--partly for the
same reasons that rendered it obnoxious to the people, but much more so
as it eclipsed, by the splendor of an ostentatious luxury, the unendowed
pedigrees and naked titles of several among the nobility. Even when the
nobility, which represented the more permanent landed interest, united
themselves by marriage (which sometimes was the case) with the other
description, the wealth which saved the family from ruin was supposed to
contaminate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and heart burnings of
these parties were increased even by the usual means by which discord is
made to cease and quarrels are turned into friendship. In the mean time,
the pride of the wealthy men, not noble, or newly noble, increased with
its cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority the grounds of which
they did not acknowledge. There was no measure to which they were not
willing to lend themselves, in order to be revenged of the outrages of
this rival pride, and to exalt their wealth to what they considered as
its natural rank and estimation. They struck at the nobility through the
crown and the Church. They attacked them particularly on the side on
which they thought them the most vulnerable,--that is, the possessions
of the Church, which, through the patronage of the crown, generally
devolved upon the nobility. The bishoprics and the great commendatory
abbeys were, with few exceptions, held by that order.

In this state of real, though not always perceived, warfare between the
noble ancient landed interest and the new moneyed interest, the
greatest, because the most applicable, strength was in the hands of the
latter. The moneyed interest is in its nature more ready for any
adventure, and its possessors more disposed to new enterprises of any
kind. Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more naturally with any
novelties. It is therefore the kind of wealth which will be reso