. It infuses a sentiment of awe, which prevents
more or less the need of force and punishment. But it is worthy of
remark that the means of keeping order in one state of society may
become the chief excitement of discontent and disorder in another, and
this is peculiarly true of aristocracy or high rank. In rude ages,
this keeps the people down; but when the people by degrees have risen
to some consciousness of their rights and essential equality with the
rest of the race, the awe of rank naturally subsides, and passes into
suspicion, jealousy, and sense of injury, and a disposition to resist.
The very institution which once restrained, now provokes. Through this
process the Old World is now passing. The strange illusion, that a
man, because he wears a garter or a riband, or was born to a title,
belongs to another race, is fading away; and society must pass through
a series of revolutions, silent or bloody, until a more natural order
takes place of distinctions which grew originally out of force. Thus
aristocracy, instead of giving order to society, now convulses it. So
impossible is it for arbitrary human ordinations permanently to degrade
human nature or subvert the principles of justice and freedom.

I am aware that it will be said, "that the want of refinement of
manners and taste in the lower classes will necessarily keep them an
inferior caste, even though all political inequalities be removed." I
acknowledge this defect of manners in the multitude, and grant that it
is an obstacle to intercourse with the more improved, though often
exaggerated. But this is a barrier which must and will yield to the
means of culture spread through our community. The evil is not
necessarily associated with any condition of human life. An
intelligent traveller tells us, that in Norway, a country wanting many
of our advantages, good manners and politeness are spread through all
conditions; and that the "rough way of talking to and living with each
other, characteristic of the lower classes of society in England, is
not found there." Not many centuries ago, the intercourse of the
highest orders in Europe was sullied by indelicacy and fierceness; but
time has worn out these stains, and the same cause is now removing what
is repulsive among those who toil with their hands. I cannot believe
that coarse manners, boisterous conversation, slovenly negligence,
filthy customs, surliness, indecency, are to descend by necessity from