This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...I have always felt with you on the calamitousness of any violent change amongst us. As long as I can remember, and through the times when French example had most influence, all the best friends of liberty and their country, at least, its wisest friends, have constantly held that our evils were not nearly great enough ...
Read More
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...I have always felt with you on the calamitousness of any violent change amongst us. As long as I can remember, and through the times when French example had most influence, all the best friends of liberty and their country, at least, its wisest friends, have constantly held that our evils were not nearly great enough to risk a revolution for their removal; and now, when so many peaceable and gradual reforms are taking place, the point is so very clear that none can wish for troubled waters but those who would fish in them. You think we shall escape this danger through the moderation of the higher classes. We have a farther and perhaps a stronger security in the curious manner in which all our different ranks, classes, sects, and parties, are dove-tailed into each other, or, if you please, matted together, which precludes the possibility of such a clear separation of one from another, as took place between the privileged and the unprivileged orders in France. It is an inestimable advantage that we have nothing answering to noblesse; that with us the younger sons of the highest peers sink back into the ranks, undistinguished except by the vague boast of blood or family, which now stands for little or nothing; whilst on the other hand, the lowest birth is no obstacle to the attainment of the full honours and privileges of the peerage. Voltaire somewhere remarks, 'In England, if the king makes his banker a peer, everybody, even the highest noble, gives him his title. With us, though Bernard is a real marquis, more ihan hundreds who are so named, who would not laugh to think of calling him marquis?' Thus our aristocracy is in a perpetual state of flux, and no one can say in any struggle who would or would not join its standard. The tory party, again, is far from...
Read Less
