se than formerly they were. Habitual dissoluteness of
manners, continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common
amongst them than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of
remedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, by being
covered with more exterior decorum. They countenanced too much that
licentious philosophy which has helped to bring on their ruin. There was
another error amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons who
approached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth were
not fully admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reason
and good policy, ought to bestow in every country,--though I think not
equally with that of other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy were
too punctiliously kept asunder: less so, however, than in Germany and
some other nations.

This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of suggesting to
you, I conceive to be one principal cause of the destruction of the old
nobility. The military, particularly, was too exclusively reserved for
men of family. But, after all, this was an error of opinion, which a
conflicting opinion would have rectified. A permanent Assembly, in which
the commons had their share of power, would soon abolish whatever was
too invidious and insulting in these distinctions; and even the faults
in the morals of the nobility would have been probably corrected, by the
greater varieties of occupation and pursuit to which a constitution by
orders would have given rise.

All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work of
art. To be honored and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and
inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages,
has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too
tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strong
struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found
to belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securities
against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates as
an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled
state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament
to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
"_Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus_," was the saying of a wise and
good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to
incline to it with some sort of p