an aristocratic power, prejudicial to the rights of the Crown, and the
balance of the constitution. Any new powers exercised in the House of
Lords, or in the House of Commons, or by the Crown, ought certainly to
excite the vigilant and anxious jealousy of a free people. Even a new
and unprecedented course of action in the whole Legislature, without
great and evident reason, may be a subject of just uneasiness. I will
not affirm, that there may not have lately appeared in the House of Lords
a disposition to some attempts derogatory to the legal rights of the
subject. If any such have really appeared, they have arisen, not from a
power properly aristocratic, but from the same influence which is charged
with having excited attempts of a similar nature in the House of Commons;
which House, if it should have been betrayed into an unfortunate quarrel
with its constituents, and involved in a charge of the very same nature,
could have neither power nor inclination to repel such attempts in
others. Those attempts in the House of Lords can no more be called
aristocratic proceedings, than the proceedings with regard to the county
of Middlesex in the House of Commons can with any sense be called
democratical.

It is true, that the Peers have a great influence in the kingdom, and in
every part of the public concerns. While they are men of property, it is
impossible to prevent it, except by such means as must prevent all
property from its natural operation: an event not easily to be compassed,
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 favour 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, wh