Such was the march of events that insensibly freed the inferior orders from the yoke of the aristocracy. Slaves in ages of barbarism, the people sought to break their galling fetters as soon as with wealth they acquired the intelligence necessary for making a proper use of liberty.

It was, nevertheless, not without struggles and conflicts that they reached this point. If facts give birth to institutions, these, in their turn, react upon facts; and the aristocracy, protected by exclusive and spoliatory laws, which it had enacted in the days of its omnipotence, derived from them immense means of conservation and resistance. For a long time, it braved all the efforts of a population desirous of freedom; and in spite of the events of the French Revolution, we see it still exercise in the greater number of the countries of Europe a domination as pernicious to the independence as it is to the material interests of the more numerous orders of the people.

Of the privileges which it thus enjoys, we propose to give an account in the sequel.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF THE LAWS WHICH CONSTITUTE AN ARISTOCRACY.

"AMONGST men united in societies, we remark," says Beccaria, " a continual tendency to concentrate privileges, power, and fortune, in the hands of the minority, and to award to the many only depression and misery." This fact is easily accounted for. It is not in man to

make a disinterested use of any sort of pre-eminence, whatever it may be; and as in the infancy of a people an imperative necessity calls the minority to preside over its early institutions, it follows that this minority will give them the direction which is most conducive to advance its own interests, irrespective of those of the majority. Such in all ages has been the conduct of the powers of this world. Clergy, communes, monarchs; administrative, or judicial hierarchies ; all those that have possessed power, have used it so as to promote their private advantage or ambition ;-all ruling bodies have, in their turns, encroached on the general rights, and have made the spoils of the multitude their pedestals.

The families, who at the outset had acquired a power that was entirely indispensable, had more than others the means of increasing and consolidating the advantages of their position. Invested with the double distinction of wealth and knowledge, they had only, in order to perpetuate it to their descendants, to transform the fact of possession into a law; and such was really the object of the laws which they dictated. Lands, wealth, honours, political prerogatives, all the elements of social domination, were reserved for themselves, and privilege constituted them into a real aristocracy.

Let us glance at the different legislative scaffoldings which supported the dominating classes at the top of the social scale, and we shall find one feature common to the whole of them ;—all of them have been so many contrivances for wringing from the people, in order to bestow upon the minority, the blessings designed by Providence to recompense the efforts of all. "The Sudra (or people) exists to serve Brama," says the

law of Menou, "but not to amass riches, for the riches of the slave being displeasing to Brama, he ought to possess nothing that is not at the disposal of his master."

Such was the spirit of the Greek and Roman institutions. Under their dominion the masses, unpityingly despoiled of every right, gradually descended to the condition of animals, whose labours supplied abundance to the men who were free.

It is besides easy to conceive, that if there can be no aristocracy without privileges, and that if all privilege is necessarily an infringement of the common law, we may expect to find great differences in the advantages which they confer. In this respect, the difference of situation always exercises a great influence; and, as nothing can less resemble the ruling aristocracies of republics than the bodies of nobles formed under a monarchy, it is betwixt their respective privileges that we find the greatest disparity. Absolute masters in the state, deriving from the exercise of their sovereign functions the strength requisite for their preservation, republican aristocracies usually confine themselves to depriving the people of all participation in public affairs. Among them, the desire of riches yields to the fear of the dangers attached to their accumulation; and as it is nearly impossible to rob the humbler classes without producing this result, their laws, instead of consecrating the inalienability of landed property, have always a tendency to maintain a just equilibrium among the private fortunes of individuals.

How could a monarchical nobility, without the support of territorial wealth, defend its prerogatives, exposed, as they are, to the hatred of the people, and the

aggressions of royalty? Far from having to dread the concentration of property, it is only by availing itself of the advantages attached to opulence, that it can keep up an imposing appearance; and the safety of the caste depends entirely on the fortune of its chiefs. Thence originate a multitude of laws, made, as jurists tell us, in the view of preserving the name, arms, and splendour of noble families. Thence arose the law of primogeniture, which prevents the dispersion of the estates of each of them; thence came entails, trusts, and lineal destinations, which ensure to these families the irrevocable possession of them. If the nobility had not been firmly entrenched upon a space the access to which was barred to the rest of society, it would long ago have fallen into obscurity.

Among the people of Slavonic origin, in Poland and in Russia, another form of legislation provides for the maintenance of the aristocratical supremacy. The nobility, in adjudging to itself the exclusive right of owning the land, takes away from the enslaved classes all hope of raising themselves to independence. Under the dominion of a system so entirely exclusive, it was useless for the nobility to occupy themselves with the situation of their families; thus the allodial regime prevails in these countries, and all the children of a noble participate equally in the paternal inheritance.

Such were the principal features of the institutions, by the aid of which, privileged castes placed the elements of their power out of the reach of the accidents of fortune. Amidst all the diversity that distinguishes them, it is clearly seen, that these institutions had only one means of arriving at the object in view,-the confiscation, to the profit of the minority, of all, or a

great part, of the advantages of society. At times, as at Berne or Venice, it was political rights which the reigning aristocracy withheld from their subjects; at other times, as in monarchies, the body of the nobility seized on the sources of wealth; and what remains clear is, that every where, according to the degree of stringency and iniquity in the laws which confer a privilege on the minority, are the well-being and happiness of nations affected and deteriorated. What countries, for example, have become at all times so easy a prey to neighbouring races, as Egypt, and India? It was because, oppression and misery having extinguished the sentiment of patriotism in the hearts of the multitude, it signified little to them what were the names of the masters, who could not add to their degradation. We know how, in the ancient republics, the slavery of the working classes, thwarting the results of civilization, made the wealth of these states the enemy of liberty. See to how many disorders the injustice of the social relations gave rise! The free man despising labour, lest he should be classed with the slave, the towns were by degrees filled with a populace whom indigence and sloth attached to the heels of the ambitious. Enslaved and wretched, the population of the country gradually perished; thence ensued those wars of pillage and extermination, in which the vanquished had nothing to expect but slavery or death; and thence came also the unanimous opinion, that conquest was the only object of society. Another singular phenomenon which marks the civilization of the ancients, but which is explained by the same cause, is the state of perfection attained by the fine arts; whilst, on the contrary, the moral and political sciences remained in their infancy.