letting out on long leases the lands of the Crown, gave such an impulse to population and wealth, that the national resources were found not to be diminished by the cession made to Sweden of the provinces of Halland, Scania, and Bleckingen. In Prussia, the exertions made by Frederick II. to call to the soil the productive class,-in Austria, the reforms that Joseph II. introduced for the same purpose,—were of the greatest service to agriculture, and rapidly augmented the wealth of these countries. Every where, in short, have we seen the prosperity of nations constantly dependent on the extent of the rights and means of development enjoyed by the active and industrious classes.

In France, some writers have taken it upon them to exclaim against the pretended dangers of the subdivision of landed estates; but see what, after having dwelt on the multiform evils of entails, was said on this subject about a dozen years ago, by the celebrated Henry Storch, in a "Course of Political Economy," composed for the instruction of the Grand Dukes of Russia, Nicholas, (now emperor,) and Michel. "The Revolution put an end to this obstacle in France, (the privileges of property), where the number of small proprietors is at present more considerable than in any other country in Europe. However slender this advantage may appear when we regard it in the light of a compensation for the evils of that terrible catastrophe, looked at in the abstract it is one of the greatest that it is possible to conceive; and if we do not as yet perceive all its salutary influence in the prosperity of that kingdom, it will not be long in becoming apparent when its government, adopting the

maxims of moderation and wisdom, and renouncing its projects of conquest and ambition, shall confine itself to the cultivation of the arts of peace, industry, and commerce."

Ah! then may France preserve, in all their integrity, the advantages so dearly purchased by her Revolution! Justice infused into the laws, a host of antisocial prejudices uprooted or weakened, property set free from its shackles, the hope of arriving at it held out to the artisan, funds devoted to luxury and dissipation transformed into means of useful employment, the road to fortune and distinction opened to all; these are the blessings for which she is indebted to the triumph of equal rights; it is these that have developed the intelligence and stimulated the energy of the more numerous classes; these are the causes that have fertilized our fields, increased our intelligence, perfected our arts, and carried well-being and the love of order into the humblest cottages of the poor. Woe be to him who would seek to deprive us of such invaluable acquisitions!

CONCLUSION.

My task is finished; and it is with the conviction that in respect to laws and institutions nothing partial, artificial, or coercive, is agreeable to the designs of Providence, or the real interests of humanity, that I bring it to a close.

I have rendered justice to the aristocracy:- -if I have declared its existence incompatible with the re

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quirements of an advanced state of civilization, I have not hesitated to acknowledge that there are times when its domination may, on the whole, be productive of more good than evil.

In the social system, power is the natural attribute of wealth and intelligence :-the more rare as society is more rude, these blessings are for a long time the portion of only a small number; and the latter, taking advantage of the ignorance of the masses, have no difficulty in transforming into an exclusive and hereditary privilege a superiority arising out of the force of circumstances. Thus were formed those bodies of nobles and dominating castes that held in dependence the rest of the population. This order of things, as long as an incipient and imperfect industry created little that was superfluous, seems the most natural of any; if all prerogatives lead to abuses, classes whose members were unable to take much extension did not feel the pressure of them; and the advantages which the aristocracy drew from them were in some measure the wages of the services which it rendered to the community.

It is no longer the same when the progress of arts and civilization enriches, enlightens, and fortifies the popular classes. In their ranks is formed by degrees a number of men capable of exercising all public functions, and worthy of participating in all the distinctions reserved for the aristocracy; and privilege branded with inutility appearing from that time a sacrifice without any compensatory advantage, society, whose interests it neglects, or whose activity it restrains, is not long in calling for its suppression.

Such is the march of the facts which, after having given birth to an aristocracy, most commonly provoke

its declension and fall. Even if privilege did not injure the interests of the majority, still it would be found impossible to withhold from them the rights of which they know the value, and for the proper exercise of which their intelligence affords a guarantee. In all times an unfounded exclusion offends them, and they can only be appeased by putting an end to it.

Let us nevertheless not accuse them either of pride or ambition :—the past amply exculpates them from such a reproach. What people have ever refused to submit themselves to the yoke of powers whose utility was obvious to them? Is not the long and peaceable reign of an aristocracy the most convincing proof of it? If, in our day, everything tends to make this same aristocracy enter under the common law, it is because, with the times when there existed no other industry than agriculture, no other source of opulence or consideration than landed property, have vanished all the titles to a superiority the evils of which alone remain.

And what arguments can be set up in favour of noble castes? They no longer possess more than a small portion of the elements of social grandeur. To the active classes belongs the superiority of wealth; and it is to the influence of unjust and restrictive laws that the nobility are indebted for that distinction which yet marks some of the families that compose their order. It is the same with intelligence. Education has become the portion of the people; and from the fact of the great number of distinguished men whom the French Revolution caused to emerge from the lowest ranks, it is easy to perceive that, long before, there was no necessity to depress the social body, in order to

rear up and produce the talents which the service of the state required.

Thus forced to abandon this line of argument, the partisans of the aristocratic regime have fallen back on other considerations. They boast, and with a greater show of reason, the love of country which local attachments give birth to. Without doubt, that noble sentiment exists; and whoever after a long absence has revisited his native soil, knows the force of it. But the delightful emotions excited by places and objects that recall to our remembrance parents, friends, and all the beings whose affections embellished and gladdened our early days, are they the peculiar privilege of large possessions? And does the heart of the soldier, as he again enters under the thatch of the paternal cottage, beat less joyously than that of the rich when the roof of the ancestral chateau reappears to his view?

Others have said, that, attached to the state by the fixity of its means and its interests, an aristocracy of the soil is endowed with a cautious, conservative spirit, which we shall search for in vain among the rest of the community. Here again they are wrong; for there are none who have more to dread from troubles and revolutions than the members of the industrial classes. Devoted to the pursuit of the most delicate and vulnerable interests, the least disorder deranges and injures their prosperity. Let a war break out, let the safety of the provinces be threatened, or the state be torn by civil dissensions, and long before landed proprietors are affected, trade is afflicted with stagnation. What is more-as every suffering population only restricts its consumption of alimentary substances after having given up the use of less essential articles, there