240 THE BRITISH ARISTOCRACY. 



privileges with each other, render Constitutional law quite unintel- 

 ligible; but through the help of some comprehensive principle of 

 interpretation to be acquired only by a thorough intelligence of its spirit 

 Our own thorough conviction has always been, that no one is competent 

 to interpret our Constitutional law who does not recognise its pervading 

 and dominant spirit to be the very same which is embodied in that 

 modern sentiment, so unacceptable to Tory ears, " The greatest good of 

 the greatest number/' We appeal to common sense and candour, 

 whether the following quotation from a speech of Burke's on the Re- 

 gency Bill, in 1789, (we quote from the Times of the 29th of May last) 

 is not in entire accordance with this our own opinion ; and whether it 

 does directly support also the argument, that noblemen are not of half so 

 .much consequence to us as they think they are. 



" He," Mr. Burke, " severely repropated the idea of restricting the 

 regent from creating peers, as likely to be attended with the most dan- 

 gerous consequences. To shut the House of Lords," he said, " was to 

 ruin the people. The people possessed the power of controlling the 

 Commons by their influence over their representatives : they had also 

 the power of controlling the crown ; because, if the crown should refuse 

 to listen to their just demands, their representatives had the means of 

 compelling it to attend to them by refusing the supplies. The crown 

 had the power of controlling the 'peers by adding to them a sufficient 

 number of new members to break any faction they might attempt to 

 form. Thus the people, according to the general principles of the Con- 

 stitution, possessed that controul, which they ought to possess, over the whole 

 legislature. They could controul their own representatives in the first 

 instance; by means of their representatives they could controul the er own, 

 and through the crown the House of Lords ; but if the crown was deprived 

 of the power of controlling the House of Lords, by overruling any con- 

 federacy that might be formed there, the people would no longer have 

 any means of restraining them ; for they had no voice in electing peers, 

 as they had in electing the House of Commons, and no means of redress 

 would remain, but an absolute dissolution of government. If, therefore, 

 they shut up the House of Peers, so that it could not again be opened, 

 except by their own consent, they betrayed the dearest and most valu- 

 able rights of the people." If this reasoning be just, and we do not 

 believe it is now by any party openly gainsayed, desperate indeed must 

 be all aristocratic hopes of recovering the old importance of nobility, 

 through an extended popular acquaintance with the principles of the 

 Glorious Constitution ! 



Since then neither the dictates of conscience, nor the convictions of 

 the understanding, nor the sentiment of religion, nor the spirit of Cow- 

 stitutional provisions, inculcate on a priori veneration for nobility, can it, 

 as information spreads, maintain an inch of its ground on the pretence of 

 abstract rights, or indefeasible privileges ? Has it even the support of a 

 reed to depend upon, beyond the opinion and good will of society of the 

 present day (not that of past ages), to which Paley refers the foundation 

 and maintenance of all civil authority?* 



* Book 6. chap. II. " Civil authority is founded in opinion ; general opinion 

 ought therefore always to be treated with deference, and managed with delicacy and 

 circumspection." 



