But this is not all.If a whole country is disposed to hold them in contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them.It is common opinion only that makes them anything, or nothing, or worse than nothing.
There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them.This species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise.There was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour riding throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than a modern Duke.The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate.The patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground.The old one has fallen through.It must now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to Reason.
If no mischief had annexed itself to the folly of titles they would not have been worth a serious and formal destruction, such as the National Assembly have decreed them; and this makes it necessary to enquire farther into the nature and character of aristocracy.
That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest.It was originally a military order for the purpose of supporting military government (for such were all governments founded in conquest); and to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose for which it was established, all the younger branches of those families were disinherited and the law of primogenitureship set up.
The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law.
It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself calls for its destruction.Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls.By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children five are exposed.Aristocracy has never more than one child.The rest are begotten to be devoured.They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.
As everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less, the interest of society, so does this.All the children which the aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge.
Unnecessary offices and places in governments and courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.
With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans.They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line, and nothing akin to them in the other.To restore, therefore, parents to their children, and children to their parents- relations to each other, and man to society- and to exterminate the monster aristocracy, root and branch- the French Constitution has destroyed the law of Primogenitureship.Here then lies the monster; and Mr.
Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view.
We have now to consider it in another.But whether we view it before or behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is still a monster.
In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what it has in some other countries.It did not compose a body of hereditary legislators.It was not "'a corporation of aristocracy, for such I have heard M.de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers.Let us then examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has resolved against having such a House in France.
Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Secondly.Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation.Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source.They begin life by trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do.With what ideas of justice or honour can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children or doles out to them some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?
Thirdly.Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate.
Fourthly.Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Fifthly.Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having property in man, and governing him by personal right.
