, that
if this stability of condition be indeed desirable for those in whom
existing circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much more
must it be good and desirable for those who already possess everything
which can be conceived necessary to happiness. It is the merest
insolence of selfishness to preach contentment to a laborer who gets
thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active and plotting
covetousness to be meritorious in a man who has three thousand a year.
In this, as in all other points of mental discipline, it is the duty
of the upper classes to set an example to the lower; and to recommend
and justify the restraint of the ambition of their inferiors, chiefly
by severe and timely limitation of their own. And, without at present
inquiring into the greater or less convenience of the possible methods
of accomplishing such an object, (every detail in suggestions of this
kind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dispute,) I will merely
state my long-fixed conviction, that one of the most important
conditions of a healthful system of social economy, would be the
restraint of the properties and incomes of the upper classes within
certain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the
accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, and a higher ideal
of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the
national mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained the prescribed
limits of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly success,
and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent moral results, would
become possible to the young; while the older men of active intellect,
whose sagacity is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own
meanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy themselves
in the superintendence of public institutions, or furtherance of
public advantage. And out of this class it would be found natural and
prudent always to choose the members of the legislative body of the
Commons; and to attach to the order also some peculiar honors, in the
possession of which such complacency would be felt as would more than
replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed richer than
others, which to many men is the principal charm of their wealth. And
although no law of this purport would ever be imposed on themselves by
the actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being gradually
brought into force from beneath, without any violent or