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LETTERS 
 
 ON 
 
 E N G L A N 
 
 BT 
 
 A. DE STAELHOLSTEIN. 
 
 u 
 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TEEUTTEL AND WURTZ, TREUTTEL, Jun. AND RICHTER, 
 30, SOHO SQUARE. 
 
 1825 
 
HowLiTT and Bkimubr, Prlnten 
 10, Frith Street, Soho. 
 
DAS33 
 577 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Page 
 
 Precautions to be taken in studying and making 
 
 Observations on England - - - 1 
 
 LETTER IL 
 
 The Progress of Civilization in France and England 
 
 compared ---17 
 
 LETTER III. 
 On the Division of Property --------39 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 On the Division of Property as it affects Agriculture 
 
 and the National Wealth - 54 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Consequence of the Division of Property ; its influence 
 
 on Population and Morals 74 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Political influence of the Division of Property - - 95 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Aristocracy and Democracy 115 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Means of Publicity — Newspapers ------ 139 
 
 957 
 
yJ contents, 
 
 letter ix. 
 
 Ppue 
 Newspapers. — ^The preceding subject continued - - 151 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Of Public Meetings 163 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 County Meetings _--_--- ----184 
 
 LETTER XII, 
 
 Of the Functions of Parliament ------- 200 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Of the composition of the House of Commons - - 210 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Continuation of the same subject - 222 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 Of Parliamentary Reform 242 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform. — The subject continued - - 258 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 Sittings of Parliament. — House of Commons - - - 276 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 Continuation of the preceding. — The House of Peers 300 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 The course of legislative Debates in France and Ens'- 
 
 land compared -------..-. giO 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 In writing the letters that follow, I thought less of making 
 a book, than of recalling to mind the impressions, which 
 my observalioa of the public manners of England, and the 
 conversation of those Englishmen, who honoured me with 
 their friendship, made on me. These letters are, for the 
 most part, two years old : reflections on the recent measures 
 of the present ministers, of course, are not to be expected 
 in them. Neither have I entered into the foreign politics 
 of England : such was not the object of this correspond- 
 ence. But had I had this object in view, I should equally 
 have pursued the course I have adopted ; and have begun 
 by giving some idea of the internal organization of the 
 country, and of the opinions it naturally produces. 
 
 Most of the errors habitually committed respecting 
 England, arise from our reasoning on jts politics as wc 
 should on those of Austria or Russia. We give to diplo- 
 matic calculations an importance, which they are far from 
 having in the eyes of the British government: and it is 
 not sufficiently known, how little value the English, pre- 
 
via ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 occupied by the mechanism of their institutions, and 
 absorbed by the innumerable interests of the strongest and 
 most complicated social order that ever existed, set on 
 external circumstances, which we erroneously consider as 
 the motives of their conduct. In forming a judgment of 
 the proceedings of government among a free people, the 
 first thing to be done is, to study the sentiments, opinions, 
 and habits of the citizens. I have advanced only a little 
 way in this course ; but, if this first attempt be of any 
 utility, perhaps it will be followed by a second. It would 
 be better, however, that minds endowed with the qualities 
 wanting to render me successful should finish what I have 
 begun, and supply the imperfections of my labours. 
 
LETTER L 
 
 Precautions to be taken in studying and makina 
 Observations on England. 
 
 THE history and constitutional laws of England 
 have long been subjects of your inquiry. You 
 have studied their spirit with perseverance and 
 judgment. You are now desirous, sir, of know- 
 ing the results of the institutions, on which vou 
 have been meditating ; and you have seen fit to 
 request from me the practical notions I have been 
 able to collect in my travels in England. I am 
 far from deeming myself capable of giving you 
 satisfaction ; but to your kindness I submit with- 
 out hesitation the scattered observations, that my 
 memory can retrace. 
 
 At all periods of history, particularly at that 
 in which we live, the interest we feel in nations 
 
 B 
 
LETTER I. 
 
 depends Jiiuch less^ .oji their power, or the 
 extent of their' temtofy, than on the degree 
 of Ub'&r-ty.th'ey'eb.joj^: The little republic of 
 Athens occupies a more important place in 
 men's thoughts, than the innumerable hosts 
 of barbarians subjected to the sceptre of the 
 despots of Asia; and if we look on modern 
 Europe we shall perceive, that it exhibits the 
 same moral phenomenon. An article of the 
 official gazette, that teaches us the will of the 
 master, is all we want to know of Russia : 
 Germany itself, notwithstanding the progress it 
 has made in literature and philosophy, seems 
 as if blotted out from the political world : but, 
 wherever a ray of liberty appears, to that spot 
 men of reflection turn their eyes, and in that 
 good men feel interested. If a country unite 
 with the enjoyment of civil liberty a high degree 
 of intellectual cultivation, and a considerable 
 political preponderance, the interest it excites 
 is still more vivid. 
 
 In discussing the subject of your inquiries, 
 we shall have no difficulty to divest ourselves 
 of the stupid prejudices, that have been ridi- 
 
LETTER I. 3 
 
 culously honoured with the name of love of our 
 country. A person may be a very good French- 
 man, without supposing England to be a country 
 of savage manners, where women are sold in the 
 market like cattle, and the men are brutified by 
 drunkenness. Our patriotism seems to me no 
 more obliged to admit such absurd tales, than 
 that of an Englishman to adopt as an article of 
 faith, that the French are a nation of dancing- 
 masters, feeding on frogs. But, while entering 
 on the question with an impartial desire of seek- 
 ing truth, there still remain many difficulties to 
 surmount. 
 
 Among the authors who have written on Great 
 Britain, some have formed a systematic whole of 
 its constitutional laws, agreeably to their own 
 ideas : they have sought to explain their origin 
 by historical conjectures, or to connect them by 
 hypotheses more or less well founded ; but they 
 have neglected to observe the real state of things. 
 They have drawn an imaginary picture, in which 
 some natural features no doubt are to be found, 
 but the image is by no means a faithful repre- 
 sentation. 
 
LtlTTER I. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, have presented to us 
 as simple facts, requiring no commentary, the 
 most curious laws or institutions, to understand 
 which seems imperiously to demand a philoso- 
 phical explanation, and the reciprocal action of 
 which is most difficult to be comprehended. 
 Such, in general, is the course pursued by Eng- 
 lish lawyers and civilians. The hoiu and the why 
 seem to have remained to them matters of indif- 
 ference : they resemble engineers, who should set 
 up guide poles, without troubling themselves 
 about the lines, that must connect the different 
 points determined by their observations : and it 
 is remarkable, that a foreigner, Montesquieu, was 
 the first to collect, in a philosophic point of view, 
 the grand fundamental institutions of England ; 
 and that the work of another foreigner, Delolme, 
 gives to this day the least imperfect exposition 
 of the British constitution. 
 
 There is another class of writings on the poli- 
 tical state of Great Britain, the utility of which 
 I am far from contesting, but which it would be 
 wrong to consult without great caution, particu- 
 larly if we would attempt to draw any general 
 
LETTER I. 
 
 conclusion from the data they present. I mean 
 compilations of authentic instruments and matters 
 of fact. 
 
 In statistics there are two ways of proceeding : 
 one is, to lay down a uniform plan, embracing the 
 whole of a country, and to compel facts to arrange 
 themselves as they can under the heads prepared 
 for them : the other, to ascertain this or that 
 series of facts with great precision, subject them 
 to the most scrupulous investigation, and then 
 deduce from them general results, by reasoning 
 or calculation. 
 
 The first of these methods is that commonly 
 adopted in absolute governments. Those grand 
 synoptical tables, that answer by a cypher or a 
 phrase every question addressed to them by su- 
 perficial curiosity, satisfy the vanity of a king or 
 a minister. Wo to the rebellious facts, that 
 refuse to enter the Procrustean bed ; no door is 
 open to their complaints ; it is impertinent of 
 them, to come and derange the symmetry of such 
 a beautiful structure. 
 
 Free countries, on the other hand, cannot be 
 subjected to this convenient uniformity. In them 
 
6 LETTER I. 
 
 the government must bend to the infinite variety 
 of actual nature. If, in these, general results 
 are not so easily obtained, it is of much greater 
 importance thoroughly to ascertain facts ; parties 
 whose interests are affected will have many ways 
 to complain, and publicity will procure redress 
 for errors. 
 
 Nothing can be compared for accuracy and 
 practical utility to the documents exhibited in 
 the reports of the different committees of the 
 British Parliament: but to draw from these im- 
 perfect data, faithful as they are, general con- 
 clusions respecting the state of the country, is a 
 labour, that requires profound reflection, and 
 knowledge of various kinds. 
 
 1 will go farther ; I will suppose that a man en- 
 dued with a just and philosophic way of thinking 
 has carefully studied all the written documents on 
 the subject of England that can be collected ; yet, if 
 he have not subjected his inquiries to the test of 
 experience ; if he have not compared them with 
 a <^iew of the country itself, I will venture to 
 affirm, that he is liable to fall into the greatest 
 errors in his deductions, even though they should 
 
LETTER I. 
 
 be conformable to the best principles of rea- 
 soning. 
 
 A few examples will elucidate my meaning. 
 
 In England, the fortunes of the aristocracy 
 are immense ; luxury is carried to an unheard-of 
 excess among the higher class. Landed property 
 is concentrated in a tolerably small number of 
 hands : the extent of farms is very considerable : 
 the cultivation of the soil employs enormous capi- 
 tals : agriculture is conducted on a great scale, 
 and on scientific principles. Prohibitory laws 
 have raised the price of grain to an enormous 
 height. The class of people who are not land- 
 holders is much greater than in France; and 
 nearly a tenth of the population derives more or 
 less assistance from the poor-rates. 
 
 These are unconnected facts taken at random, 
 but the truth of which is incontrovertible. 
 
 Now what conclusions must naturally be drawn 
 from them, by a man accustomed to reason justly, 
 but who has never seen England with his own 
 eyes ? what ideas would he form of the country 
 from such data ? 
 
 Farms are of great extent, he would say ; agri- 
 
b LETTIlR I. 
 
 culture is scientific; it employs more implements 
 and fewer hands than on the Continent. The 
 fields then must be vast and covered with uniform 
 crops: hedges, ditches, fences, do not obstruct 
 the progress of the hoe, the drill-plough, and 
 other improved agricultural implements. Here 
 and there we shall find vast rural establishments; 
 but the country is not interspersed with those 
 peasants' cottages, that delight the eye in some of 
 our provinces. 
 
 This inference is strictly logical, yet it is directly 
 opposed to the truth. In the greater part of 
 England, the country is as much intersected with 
 hedges as Switzerland, or the Bocage of la Vendee; 
 its crops are various ; it is embellished by clumps 
 of trees, unmolested by the plough, that turns 
 aside, as if respecting them with religious vene- 
 ration; the general appearance of the country is 
 that, of a land of small farms; and nothing can 
 exhibit a more pleasing picture of comfort and 
 happiness, than the cottage of an English peasant. 
 
 An erroneous system of prohibitory laws, the 
 man whom I have taken for an example will say, 
 raised the price of grain a few years ago, to an 
 
LKTl'ER ]. y 
 
 exorbitant height, and tempted the farmer by 
 profits, that the nature of the soil could not have 
 promised him. AVhat must have been the con- 
 sequence? Every bit of ground capable of pro- 
 ducing corn must have been sown, the plains of 
 England must resemble those of la Beauce, or la 
 Brie, and none capable of cultivation left un- 
 tilled. 
 
 This reasoning too would be just, yet it would 
 lead to a mistake, contradicted by the actual ap- 
 pearance of England ; since in fact, notwithstand- 
 ing the great number of enclosure bills, that have 
 been passed within these few years, no country 
 equally populous contains such an extent of 
 waste land abandoned to unprofitable pasturage. 
 
 If our logician pass from the aspect of the coun- 
 try to that of the inhabitants, what conjectures 
 will he form? He knows, on the one hand, that 
 the aristocracy enjoy colossal fortunes; and on 
 the other, that a numerous population is supported 
 by public charity. No doubt, observes he, the 
 traveller who visits England is grieved at the 
 contrast of unbridled luxury and squalid want; 
 the gates of sumptuous palaces are crowded with 
 
10 LETTER I. 
 
 beggars; the same contrast will appear in food, 
 clothing, and all the particulars of domestic eco- 
 nomy. 
 
 This supposition also would be conformable to 
 reason; but what would facts say to it? They 
 would tell us, that in no country of Europe does 
 there exist so little difference between the phy- 
 sical enjoyments of the different classes of society, 
 and that the progress of manufactures of all kinds 
 tends daily to diminish the inequalities to be found. 
 * Where then are the people?' said the allied sove- 
 reigns, on their arrival in London, astonished at 
 perceiving no external appearance of wretchedness 
 in the curious crowd that pressed around them. 
 
 What is to be concluded from all this ? Is Eng- 
 land placed by nature out of the reach of the laws 
 of reasoning, and the general relations between 
 cause and effect ? Does what is true every where 
 else cease to be true on passing the straits of 
 Dover ? — Undoubtedly not : but, when a problem 
 is complicated, we must not pretend to solve it 
 without carefully combining all the data. 
 
 We have seen how necessary it is, in studying 
 the present state of England, to avoid drawing 
 
LETTER I. 11 
 
 hastily the most legitimate conclusions from a 
 few partial data. We must not be less cautious 
 in tracing effects to their causes ; or precipitately 
 account for a phenomenon by deriving it from 
 some simple source, without examining whether 
 it be not the result of several different causes, 
 foreign, or perhaps opposite, to that to which it is 
 ascribed. 
 
 It is through neglect of this precaution, that so 
 many persons commit such gross errors in their 
 judgments respecting England. One asserts, that 
 the commercial and maritime superiority of Great 
 Britain; is owing to its colonial system. But 
 why has Spain, so long in possession of colonies, 
 more extensive and more favoured by climate 
 than those of England, remained poor, and with- 
 out trade? The commercial prosperity of England 
 then must have other sources than colonial pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 Another boldly ascribes to prohibitory laws the 
 prosperity of English manufactures, without re- 
 flecting, that in most countries of Europe prohi- 
 bitory laws have produced effects the very reverse ; 
 and equally without reflecting, that all the well- 
 
12 LETTER r. 
 
 informed men in England, all the enlightened 
 manufacturers themselves, exclaim against the 
 absurdity of this system, and have surmounted its 
 inconveniencies only by extraordinary efforts of 
 activity and intelligence, till a new administration, 
 opening its eyes to the real interests of its country,, 
 has begun to demolish the whole of this Gothic 
 edifice. 
 
 A third will say without hesitation : the real 
 strength of England, the Palladium of its liberty, 
 consists in that wealthy powerful aristocracy, ever 
 ready to defend the rights of the people against 
 the encroachments of the crown ; in those here- 
 ditary fortunes, which entails and the laws of 
 promogeniture preserve in the same family, and 
 thus secure its salutary influence. — I am far from 
 disputing the services, that the English aristro- 
 cracy has rendered to the liberties of its country, 
 but still it is worth while to inquire, why these 
 entails, to which such happy effects are ascribed 
 in England, have produced in Spain and Italy only 
 a deterioration of estates, and the brutalization of 
 their possessors. And if in most countries of 
 Europe the nobility has become frivolous, igno- 
 
LETTER I. 13. 
 
 rant, and servile, is it not evident, that we must 
 seek for peculiar reasons to explain, why the 
 English aristrocracy has maintained itself at the 
 head of the progress of society towards liberty 
 and knowledge? 
 
 In unorganized nature, phenomena in general 
 require only a single cause to explain them. A 
 stone left to itself falls to the ground; another 
 moves on an inclined plane with an accelerated 
 velocity : they follow one common law, that of 
 gravitation ; and in whatever place a body is sub- 
 jected to the action of the same force, it will obey 
 it precisely in the same manner. If we enter into 
 the vee;etable world, the phenomena become 
 more complicated. A plant will prosper in one 
 country, and languish in another, though sub- 
 jected to the same cultivation, and exposed to a 
 similar temperature : for this we must take into 
 the account — the influence of the climate, the 
 nature of the soil, the quality of the element that 
 waters it, and many other accessory circum- 
 stances. But when we ascend to animated beings, 
 what a crowd of varying, inexplicable pheno- 
 mena meets our eyes ! what different aspects 
 
14 LETTER I. 
 
 does the vital power assume ! what surprising 
 modifications does it produce on the matter sub- 
 jected to its action! Shall we on these accounts 
 deny, that organic laws preside over the existence 
 of living beings ? surely not : we shall only 
 acknowledge, that they are more difficult to 
 comprehend, and require deeper study. 
 
 A free country is in the order of human so- 
 cieties what animated beings are in the scale of 
 the physical world. Where all the powers of 
 nature have their full scope, we must expect not 
 only infinite variety, but strange contrasts. Such 
 is the spectacle that England exhibits. We can- 
 not account for the state of this country by any 
 of the trite general observations, that are so satis- 
 factory to common minds ; or, which is the same 
 thing, to superficial thinkers. All the questions 
 relating to it must be studied, and thoroughly 
 too, in themselves ; and there is scarcely one 
 general observation, which, put absolutely, may 
 not be met by an observation totally opposite. 
 
 Shall we appeal to the obstinate resistance of 
 the house of peers to the most legitimate claims 
 of the catholics, as a proof of England being 
 
lettp:ii r. 15 
 
 intolerant? We should be unjust did we not add, 
 that, notwithstanding this anomaly, notwith- 
 standing the serious inconveniences resulting from 
 the civil state being confounded with the religious, 
 there is no other country in Europe, where the 
 practical liberty of religious worship and preach- 
 ing enjoy such a latitude ; no other country where 
 it is lawful for any citizen to build a temple, open 
 it to the public, and explain in it the word of God 
 according to his own opinions and understanding. 
 
 Shall we say that England, free in itself, has 
 acted with Machiavelian policy in its foreign 
 relations ? has favoured, has sanctioned, the sub- 
 jugation of other countries? We should have 
 but too many proofs to adduce in support of the 
 assertion : yet we should not be just without 
 adding, that, even under the authority of the 
 alien bill, England has always been the asylum 
 of the unfortunate victims of continental 
 despotism; and that no nation has been op- 
 pressed, no injustice committed, without calling 
 forth the voice of eloquence in the British parlia- 
 ment, and rousing it in defence of every one 
 suffering in the cause of liberty. 
 
]6 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 It would be easy for me to multiply examples ; 
 but these may suffice, to justify what I have 
 advanced. I have visited England at two dif- 
 ferent periods : I saw it during the heroic contest 
 it maintained against the power of Napoleon ; I 
 visited it nine years subsequently, after the 
 changes peace had introduced into its interior 
 economy, as well as into its political relations; 
 and the more the study of this country has 
 engaged my attention, the more clearly I have 
 perceived, that to pretend to explain such various 
 results by a few general axioms would be the 
 height of levity or presumption. 
 
17 
 
 LETTER [I. 
 
 The Progress of Civilization in France and England 
 compared. 
 
 We cannot take a survey of England with an 
 unprejudiced mind, without being compelled to 
 acknowledge, that civilization is there farther 
 advanced than in any country on the Continent, 
 that knowledge is more widely diffused, the 
 science of government better understood, and all 
 the movements of the social machine more rapid 
 and more ably combined. These are facts that 
 might be established a priori, and are fully 
 demonstrated by experience. To deny them 
 would be in some degree to dispute the import- 
 ance of all the political institutions, that have 
 employed for ages the meditations of the sage 
 and the efforts of nations. If a country enjoying 
 for a series of years a free constitution, in which 
 
 c 
 
18 LETTER TI. 
 
 the people have taken a part in the direction of 
 affairs and the administration of justice, where 
 they are enlightened by the freedom of the press, 
 where every path is open to the pursuit of the 
 unshackled mind, do not excel in knowledge 
 those that have groaned under military despotism, 
 or vegetated beneath the sway of mistresses and 
 favourites; we must renounce the study of politics 
 as a science, and assert, that human affairs are 
 governed by blind chance, or ascribe to nations 
 those privilejlies of birth, that we justly dispute 
 inindividuals. I am far from denying altogether 
 the influence of descent: but he cannot have 
 studied history, who would put this influence into 
 the scale as a balance to the power of institutions ; 
 and it appears to me as little the prerogative of a 
 nation as of a gentleman, to know every thing 
 without learning any thing. 
 
 But to what must we attribute those grand 
 phenomena of social order, that England dis- 
 plays ? Are they the effect of a fortuitous com- 
 bination of happy circumstances, or the necessary 
 result of certain institutions ? and, among these 
 institutions, which are of a nature to produce 
 
LETTER II. 19 
 
 analogous results to whatever country they are 
 transported? and which, on the contrary, re- 
 quire their native soil for success, and cannot 
 adapt themselves to that of France ? These are 
 vast questions, on which I cannot enter here. 
 However, in running over mentally the history of 
 the two countries, a remarkable parallelism 
 strikes me : I find in each a series of events nearly 
 similar, and each of the phases of English history 
 precedes, by a century and a half, its correspon- 
 dent phase in that of France. 
 
 In 1215 the barons imposed on John, surnamed 
 Lackland, that Great Charter, which the people 
 of England still revere as the foundation of their 
 liberties. A hundred and forty-one years after, 
 the states general of 1356, availing themselves 
 of the captivity of John, king of France, demanded 
 national securities as the price of the subsidies 
 which they granted to his son. 
 
 After the wars of the two roses, the superior 
 nobility were in a deficient and exhausted state ; 
 and of this Henry VH. and VHI. availed them- 
 selves, to establish despotism by favouring the 
 advancement of the Commons. A hundred and 
 
 c 2 
 
IJO LETTER II. 
 
 fifty years afterward, the wars of the League 
 having terminated, Richelieu obtained by a simi- 
 lar policy a success of the same kind, though to a 
 far greater extent. 
 
 The age of Elizabeth offers a striking analogy 
 to that of Louis XIV. In both reigns the great- 
 ness of the monarch, more real however in that 
 of Elizabeth, victory abroad, and the splendour of 
 the court and lustre of literature at home, con- 
 soled the people for the absence of liberty. A 
 century and a half separate the period of Elizabeth 
 from that of the greatest power of Louis. 
 
 The long parliament began in 1640 the contest 
 of the people of England against Charles I. A 
 hundred and forty-nine years after the states- 
 general were convoked at Versailles. 
 
 A hundred and forty-four years supervened 
 between the death of Charles I and that of 
 Louis XVI. 
 
 Finally, the restoration of Charles II preceded 
 by a hundred and fifty-four years that of the 
 house of Bourbon. And if we read the history 
 of the two revolutions together, how many 
 astonishing resemblances in the progress of 
 
LETTER II. 21 
 
 events, in the order of ideas, and even in the most 
 trifling circumstances, strike our eyes. 
 
 To a comparison of this kind we must not 
 ascribe more importance than it deserves; and it 
 M^ould be particularly unreasonable to infer, that 
 the present state of social order in France is 
 a century and a half behind that of England. Our 
 revolution was an event very different in import- 
 ance from that of England : a much more rapid 
 impulse was given by it to manners and opinions 
 throughout the whole world, so as to accelerate 
 every kind of improvement. Let us not lose sight 
 too of a fundamental distinction, which Mr. 
 Guizot has established with such superiori tyof 
 intellect in his * Essais sur VHistoire de France ; 
 this is, that the progress of civilization in Eng- 
 land has always advanced on a level with that of 
 liberty, and frequently even has only been the 
 consequence of it, while in France it has pre- 
 ceded, or remained independent of it. Our 
 neighbours therefore must be far from having the 
 same superiority over us in regard to civilization, 
 that they possess incontestibly in the political 
 system. 
 
22 LETTER II. 
 
 Let us not be deceived however by a sentiment 
 of national pride. We should fall into a mistake, 
 if we were to judge of the state of the two nations 
 by comparing their most eminent intellectual 
 flowers. This comparison would give France an 
 appearance of advantage, which an observation 
 of their real state in the aggregate would unhap- 
 pily belie. 
 
 1 think it certain, that, in the select portion of 
 the French nation intellectually considered, there 
 are more minds gifted with the faculty of gene- 
 ralising their ideas, connecting them with philo- 
 sophical principles, and expressing them in a 
 brilliant or original manner, either in books or 
 in conversation. I believe too, that, on descend- 
 ing to the other extremity of the scale, we shall 
 find in the uninstructed classes more natural 
 vivacity, more quickness in seizing new ideas, 
 more of that intuitive spirit, with which the sun 
 inspires the inhabitants of the countries favoured 
 by it. But it is not a few men of wit, or even of 
 genius, a few bold thinkers, or a few ingenious 
 theorists, that constitute the moral and political 
 strength of a nation. This strength consists in the 
 
LETTER II, 23 
 
 average of intelligence, in the general knowledge 
 of the principles and practical institutions, to 
 which the direction of human affairs appertains. 
 This average of intellect supplies the statesman, 
 the lawyer, the manufacturer, the merchant, in a 
 word all the active members of a well organized 
 community: and in this respect no country in 
 Europe is on a par with England. No nation 
 possesses such an intellectual homogeneousness, 
 and consequently such a strength of cohesion, if 
 we may be allowed this scientific expression. 
 
 Our geometricians are more profound, our en- 
 gineers more scientific : their machinists, their 
 manufacturers, surpass ours in number and prac- 
 tical ability. In some of our departments the 
 elements of learning are more general than in some 
 of the counties of Great Britain. Alsace is cer- 
 tainly much superior in this respect to the mid- 
 land and southern counties of England (for West- 
 moreland and the South of Scotland are superior 
 to any other country in Europe, some parts of 
 Switzerland excepted) : but where on the other 
 side of the Channel shall we find a whole province, 
 in which, as in Brittany, scarcely one child, out 
 
24 LETTER ir. 
 
 of a population of five hundred persons, is sent to 
 school? Where shall we find populous places' 
 the chief towns of departments, destitute of alj 
 intellectual resource, without one place of educa- 
 tion, one reading room, or one bookseller, unless 
 we give this name to the keeper of a petty shop* 
 whose stock consists of a few prayer-books and 
 two or three sorry novels ? Yet such is the me- 
 lancholy state of most of our provinces, such the 
 country where the government, far from calling to 
 its assistance all possible means of cultivating the 
 mind, far from accepting with gratitude the endea- 
 vours of private philanthropy, seems to make a 
 point of discouraging and fettering them. 
 
 Bacon has said with that strength of mind, in 
 which no modern has equalled him: — Aj:iomata 
 injimanon multum ah e.vperiefitia nuda discrepant ; su- 
 pj'emavero et generalissima ratmialia sunt et abstracta, 
 €t nil habent solidi. At media sunt axiomata ilia vera^ 
 et solida, et viva, in quibus humance res et fortunce 
 sitae sunt. " Vulgar axioms diff'er little from simple 
 experience : the highest and most general are 
 abstract reasonings, and have nothing solid. But 
 the mean are the true, solid, and vital axioms. 
 
LETTER II. 25 
 
 by which human affairs are regulated." These 
 words, the conciseness of the original of which 
 renders them difficult to translate, may be adopted 
 as the motto of English intellect. In France we 
 have but too many of the * highest and most 
 general axioms,' the result of which has been two 
 serious inconveniences : one, that the conceptions 
 of our thinking men have not stepped out of the 
 bounds of abstraction ; the other, that men en- 
 dued with some degree of practical understand- 
 ing, perceiving how little applicable to practice 
 these abstractions were, have imbibed a con- 
 temptuous indifference to all kinds of theory, and, 
 confining themselves within the sphere of ' vulgar 
 axioms,' axiomata infima, have condemned them- 
 selves never to rise above mediocrity ; which per- 
 haps they would have avoided, had they con- 
 nected their daily experience with some guiding 
 principle. 
 
 The history of the two countries appears suffi- 
 ciently to explain the different directions that men's 
 minds have taken in them. In England, where the 
 people have enjoyed from time immemorial insti- 
 tutions, imperfect it must be confessed, yet con- 
 
26 LETTER II. 
 
 taining in them the germs of order and liberty, they 
 could not but apply themselves more particularly 
 to improve what existed, to defend the rights 
 they had acquired, and to secure them by actual 
 guarantees. Thus firm persuasions and practical 
 ideas have been formed. The form of trial by 
 jury, the liberty of discussion, the voting of taxes, 
 the right of assembling, have become political 
 articles of faith, that every citizen adopts, as it 
 were, at his birth, and that influence the whole 
 of his opinions and conduct, generally without 
 attempting to account for them. 
 
 Among a hundred Englishmen, who at a public 
 meeting toast ' The cause for which Hampden 
 bled in the field, and Sidney on the scaffold,' few 
 certainly are capable of defining the right of re- 
 sistance, and philosophically assigning its limits : 
 but all know their rights and their duties; all are 
 jealous, not only of their own prerogatives, but of 
 those of each of their fellow-citizens, and are 
 acquainted with the institutions that secure them, 
 and the mode of action of each of these insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 In France, previous to the revolution, civilians 
 
LETTER II. 27 
 
 disputed on the question, whether there were or 
 were not any such things as fundamental laws ; 
 but every one agreed, that some were fallen into 
 desuetude, and others did not deserve to be upheld. 
 Hence philosophers naturally gave themselves a 
 full career in the land of Utopia ; while the dis- 
 contented blackened with energy not only the 
 abuses at which they were justly shocked, but 
 even those habits and ideas, from which they 
 could not emancipate themselves without the 
 greatest difficulty. Who can read Voltaire with- 
 out being convinced, that no one would have 
 found himself less at his ease amid those new 
 forms of society, to the production of which his 
 writings so powerfully contributed ? 
 
 Such was the frame of mind in which the 
 assembly of the states general was met. As 
 abuses had reigned without control, abstract prin- 
 ciples thought their time was arrived, and that 
 philosophy would assume the pleasure of recon- 
 structing the social edifice on a new plan. Men's 
 intentions were pure, their ideas were vast: they 
 thought they might look with a sort of disdain on 
 that England, where it was necessary to consider 
 
28 LETTER II. 
 
 resistance as something, to conciliate existing 
 powers, and even to act in concert with prejudices 
 of more than one kind. God forbid, that I should 
 dispute the benefits, for which we are indebted 
 to the Constituent Assembly, That men, for the 
 most part inexperienced, should triumph in so 
 short a time over so many difficulties, and sweep 
 away so many abuses and injustices, will remain 
 for ever an honour to themselves, and to the 
 nation in the bosom of which they were born. 
 But as, in regard to social institutions, the most 
 ardent imagination scarcely goeg beyond what 
 exists, and what every one is accustomed to, 
 when the question was to rebuild, it was astonish- 
 ing to perceive the timidity of those, who had 
 been the boldest in the work of destruction, and 
 the most ambitious in their hopes. 
 
 At present we are not quite such novices, and 
 our minds have acquired something more of prac- 
 tice ; still there remain many traces of timidity in 
 application, that form a contrast with our pride 
 in theory, and with the demand of the public for 
 new ideas. If the liberty of the press be the ques- 
 tion, for instance, we find men, who occupy a high 
 
LETTER II. 29 
 
 rank in the political world, proposing gravely to 
 prohibit in the most peremptory manner writers 
 and journalists of every description from mention- 
 ing any circumstances in private life ; and to 
 punish whoever shall print the name of an indivi- 
 dual unconnected with public affairs, be the 
 nature, complexion, and tendency of the article 
 inculpated what they may. Assuredly such an 
 idea would never enter the head of the most sim- 
 ple citizen of England or America : his good sense 
 would tell him at once, that it is impracticable ; 
 and that, could it even be realized, it would 
 deprive the liberty of the press of the most valu- 
 able, the most moral, of all its advantages, that of 
 habituating men to live in the presence of their 
 fellows, of restraining by the curb of public 
 opinion, of stimulating by the hope of praise or 
 fear of blame, those whose moral sentiments 
 would be insufficient to retain them in the path of 
 duty ; of substituting for the punctilious delicacy 
 of the drawing-room the noble and manly feeling 
 of exhibiting our actions to the world, and expo- 
 sing our conduct to the examination of our fellow 
 citizens. Yet they, who have brought forward 
 
30 LETTER ir. 
 
 among us such an idea, are by no means unused 
 to reflect on the science of politics : so far from it, 
 we reckon them, one in particular, among the most 
 distinguished of our civilians ; but no reach of 
 mind can supply the want of long habituation to 
 the manners of a free country. 
 
 If in the present day we were to claim for 
 France the application of the trial by jury to all 
 civil causes, and the almost unlimited right of the 
 citizens to meet and deliberate on public affairs, 
 how few would be found, I do not say among the 
 friends of power or men of timid minds, but in 
 the foremost ranks of opposition, who would not 
 view with apprehension these two institutions, 
 which England peaceably enjoys, and which many 
 men of elevated mind sconsider as indispensable 
 conditions of the due administration of justice, 
 and of real libery ! 
 
 This timidity in application to practice is the 
 more striking, as our philosophical orators and 
 writers soar to still higher considerations, and 
 lay down general principles with more firmness 
 of reasoning. I read one day some of our poli- 
 tical pamphlets most remarkable for the strength 
 
LETTER ir. 31 
 
 and extent of their ideas with Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh, I need not say therefore with one, to whom 
 no region of human thought is unknown : — ** What 
 think you of this?" I said to him. ** It is very 
 spirited," was his answer; " but here we take all 
 this for granted." And in fact what is a theorem 
 to us is an axiom to them; and they employ, in 
 acting, the time, that we spend in teaching or 
 demonstrating. This is an immense advantage ; 
 for axioms are adapted to the use of the many, 
 while theorems are within the reach only of those, 
 who can follow out their demonstration. If a 
 seaman, before taking an observation, were obliged 
 to have recourse to the principles of trigonometry 
 and physics, on which his proceeding is founded, 
 and to prove them to the crew, instead of em- 
 ploying formulae already calculated, the ship 
 would run great hazard of steering a wrong 
 course. Thus institutions, and the habits accru- 
 ing from them, are the formulae of the poli- 
 tician. No doubt, we should compare the for- 
 mulae with the theory, to satisfy ourselves, that 
 they are agreeable to it ; but this once done, it 
 
32 LETTER ir. 
 
 would be a waste of time to recur continually to 
 the principle. 
 
 It is only in the mathematical sciences however, 
 the theories of which are as immutable as the data 
 on which they are founded, that such reasoning 
 admits of no reply. In the social order, on the 
 contrary, where theories participate in the fluc- 
 tuation of ideas and human interests, we are bound 
 at all times to establish them in the eyes of rea- 
 son, as well as the formulae derived from them. 
 Without denying the practical superiority of the 
 English, it is certain, that they carry too far their 
 respect for what exists : and to employ a style, 
 with the abuse of which our preachers have been 
 reproached, the facts that surround them appear 
 in their eyes matters of insuperable necessity, 
 when it would be the easiest thing in nature to 
 extricate themselves from the difficulty, by simply 
 recurring to a philosophical principle. 
 
 For more than three years tjie attention of par- 
 liament was occupied on the reform of the laws re- 
 specting marriage. The old system abounded with 
 difficulties and injustice : the changes introduced 
 
LETTER II. 33 
 
 have occasioned perplexities previously denounced 
 by eminent lawyers. The debates on the occasion 
 were spirited, and even violent : on both sides 
 great learning and sound logical argumentation 
 were displayed; yet, amid this conflict of opi- 
 nions, the simple idea of making marriage a civil 
 contract, of leaving to the conscience of the par- 
 ties the choice of a religious sanction, — an idea 
 truly moral, of which our laws afford an example, 
 and which with us has produced nothing but 
 advantages, — does not appear to have offered itself 
 to a single mind, or at least they, who would 
 have been inclined to adopt it, did not think it 
 practicable to bring it forward. 
 
 I have witnessed a still more striking instance 
 of this disposition of the English to confine all 
 questions within the sphere of the circumstances 
 peculiar to England. In the session of 1822, Mr. 
 Canning made a motion tending to re-open the 
 entrance of the upper house to the catholic peers, 
 who were deprived of this privilege in consequence 
 of the conspiracy, real or pretended, known by 
 the name of the popish plot. This motion, after 
 being carried through the house of commons, was 
 
34 LETTER ir. 
 
 thrown out of the house of peers after a very 
 memorable debate. I was fortunate enough to 
 be present on the occasion; and my memory re- 
 cords few intellectual treats comparable to the dis- 
 cussion of a subject so important, by orators rank- 
 ing so high in talent as well as in society. Lords 
 Erskine, Holland, Grey, Grenville, Liverpool, and 
 the Chancellor, most of the leading members in the 
 political bands, took an active part in the debate. 
 The avowed object of the motion was to prepare 
 the emancipation of the catholics : on this ground 
 it was attacked by its adversaries, and defended 
 by the minority. It seems natural then to sup- 
 pose, that the general principles of toleration 
 would have an ample share in the discussion. By 
 no means; they were not even touched upon: I 
 will say more, no one thought of them. The 
 particular interest of England absorbed the whole 
 attention of the speakers, as well as of the public. 
 it may be said, no doubt, that the general argu- 
 ments were worn threadbare by seventeen years 
 of discussion; and besides, that the policy of the 
 minority, on this occasion, was to confine the 
 question within its narrowest limits ; but I never- 
 
LETTER If. 86 
 
 iheless maintain, that my general position is fully 
 borne out. 
 
 Lord Holland spoke with that vivacity of argu- 
 ment, which the heir of the name of Fox alone 
 could combine with such a flow of feeling : but 
 in this speech, which I was told recalled to mind 
 the happiest effusions of his uncle, he confined 
 himself solely to proving, with a profound know- 
 ledge of the history of his country, the absurdity 
 of the testimony that led to the condemnation of 
 the catholic peers, or to refuting particular objec- 
 tions: while, familiar as the higher questions of 
 morals and philosophy were to him, he never 
 thought for a moment of dipping into their 
 sphere. 
 
 In another point of view I was not less struck 
 with the speech of the Lord Chancellor. The 
 ground of his reasoning was in fact this whimsical 
 argument: If the protestant cease to be the 
 ruling religion of England, the catholic must 
 become so. And from the energy and M-armth 
 with which he spoke extempore, it was evident, 
 that his conviction Was sincere ; and that a pro- 
 found lawyer, a man grown old in the paths of 
 
 d2 
 
36 LETTER ir. 
 
 kgislatioQ and politics, had never seriously 
 admitted the idea, that a country might subsist 
 without a ruling religion : so powerfully does 
 whatever is appear what must be. 
 
 Transfer the same subject of debate to the 
 French tribune, unquestionably liberty of con- 
 science, the connexion between civil and religious 
 authority, the general principles in favour of 
 toleration, would have constituted the subjects 
 of every speech. It is equally evident, that, 
 under favourable circumstances, the public would 
 have declared warmly for the question, so as to 
 render all resistance to it impossible. So far the 
 advantage is with us : at least it may be thought 
 so. But these speeches, abundant perhaps in 
 talent, would have made only a transient im- 
 pression. The question so speedily carried, if 
 the torrent of opinion or of power had run in its 
 favour, would have been as speedily lost, if it had 
 taken an opposite direction. 
 
 In England old opinions are more difficult to 
 be shaken, and notions as well as interests make 
 an obstinate resistance : but when by dint of 
 struggling an opinion has made a conquest, it 
 
LETTER II. 37 
 
 is for ever ; it does not suffer itself to be dis- 
 possessed. 
 
 In 18] 9, we made a great step in the career of 
 liberty : we had obtained a law on the suppression 
 of abuses of the press, which, notwithstanding 
 some slight imperfections, was acknowledged by 
 masters of the science, by the English lawyers 
 themselves, as the best and most philosophical, 
 that had hitherto existed in any country. But 
 this law, ill understood by the public, harassed 
 by unreasonable objections, even from those, who 
 ought to have been most sensible of its advan- 
 tages, was indebted for its success solely to the 
 talents of a minister, and the complaisance of a 
 majority. A few months had scarcely elapsed, 
 before power changed hands, or, which is worse, 
 the men in power changed their principles; the 
 new law of the press ceased to exist, without 
 leaving any traces of itself either in our jurispru- 
 dence or in our habits; and many years perhaps 
 will pass away, before France can hope to recover 
 possession of it. 
 
 In England the struggle was long. Mr. Fox 
 jn parliament, and Lord Erskine at the bar, had 
 
38 LETTER II. 
 
 more than one contest, and overthrew more than 
 one formidable adversary, before they obtained 
 for the jury the important prerogative of pro- 
 nouncing on the criminality of a work, as well as 
 the fact of its publication. But the longer the 
 dispute continued, the greater was the interest 
 taken in it by the public, and the more deeply were 
 men's minds impressed with the importance of the 
 question: and when at length Lord Erskine ob- 
 tained from the king the noblest motto, that ever 
 adorned the arms of a statesman. Trial by Jury^ 
 the principle, the triumph of which was thus pro- 
 claimed, became an article of the political creed 
 of England, that the most strenuous friends of 
 power in the present day would scarcely think of 
 contesting. 
 
39 
 
 LETTER III 
 
 Ofi the Division of Property. 
 
 The division of property is a question of such 
 importance, whether considered in itself, or in 
 its moral and political consequences, and there 
 is such a difference between our ideas on the 
 subject, and those prevailing in England, that 
 I purpose to make it the subject of some of the 
 letters you allow me the honour of addressing 
 to you. 
 
 I enter on the discussion with the satisfaction 
 of thinking, that on this point we are nearer the 
 truth, or at least more disposed to investigate it 
 with impartiality, than our neighbours. In France, 
 the equal division of property among our children, 
 has passed from our laws into our habits, or 
 rather from our habits into our laws. This 
 equality appears to us so natural, that, were 
 
40 LETTER III. 
 
 there no law on the subject, matters would pro- 
 ceed nearly as at present. Notwithstanding this 
 general tendency of opinion, however, the philoso- 
 phical mind will not refuse to examine the oppo- 
 site opinion : it will acknowledge, that property, 
 landed in particular, is a creation of the social 
 order, and conceive, that it may be regulated at 
 the will of the community, for the greatest advan- 
 tage of the whole. In England, on the contrary, 
 habits and prejudices hold such sway over men's 
 minds, that, with few exceptions, they are become 
 incapable of reasoning in any concatenation of 
 ideas out of their usual course. And even the 
 most enlightened men are much more ready 
 to seek arguments in defence of what exists 
 among them, than impartially to examine what 
 is most desirable for the physical and moral 
 welfare of the human species. w 
 
 But if we be more free from prejudices on the 
 question itself, we are far from being exempt from 
 prejudices respecting what passes among our 
 neighbours. We employ somewhat vaguely the 
 terms entail, consolidation of property, the misery 
 of the lower classes, and poor rates; and, as 
 
LETTER I IT. 4% 
 
 I observed in one of my former letters, we very 
 improperly figure England to ourselves, as exhi- 
 biting a lamentable contrast between the exorbi- 
 tant wealth of a small number of privileged persons 
 and the sufferings of the people. Nothing how- 
 ever is farther from the truth. Let us first 
 endeavour then, to exhibit the facts. 
 
 Fortunes are less unequally distributed in 
 England, than is commonly supposed. The 
 appearance of the capital is a certain indication 
 of this, which the general aspect of the country 
 confirms. That London Directory, which is 
 known by the title of the Court Guide, fur- 
 nishes a datum in this respect, which may appear 
 superficial, yet notwithstanding deserves con- 
 sideration. This Directory, which includes about 
 eight thousand addresses, contains no names but 
 those of persons inhabiting the western part of 
 the metropolis, or what is called the fashionable 
 quarter ; a term to which the English attach more 
 importance, than might be supposed from the 
 natural gravity of their character, and the serious 
 beauty of their institutions. To inhabit this 
 quarter, and see their names inscribed in the 
 
4t 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 Court Guide, is a mark of distinction, which is 
 an habitual object of emulation to the middle 
 class, and presents to the imagination of some 
 the pleasures of frivolity, to others the liberal 
 enjoyments of study, and of the conversation of 
 men of talent. Now it is generally acknowledged, 
 that the lowest fortune enabling a person to re- 
 side at the west-end of the town, and adopt its 
 manners, is an income of £3,000 (75,000 fr.) 
 a year. Supposing then, that of the eight thou- 
 sand names figuring in this Directory, only half 
 are masters of families, we find in the city of 
 London alone, without taking into account the 
 capitals of the other two kingdoms, or reckoning 
 the many wealthy persons who reside in the 
 country the whole year, four thousand persons of 
 fortune, the poorest of whom would be deemed 
 opulent in most of the countries of Europe. 
 
 But in proceeding ever so little downward in 
 the scale, the number of those in easy circum- 
 stances increases with extreme rapidity. The 
 tax on income, property tax, which was established 
 by Mr. Pitt, in 1798, and finished with the war, 
 furnishes us with remarkable data on this point. 
 
LETTER III. 43 
 
 In his original plan the minister exempted from 
 the new tax all persons, whose income was be- 
 low two hundred pounds sterling. He estimated 
 at ten millions sterling, the produce of the tax ; 
 but he soon perceived, that he had deceived him- 
 self greatly in his calculation, and that he must 
 necessarily lower the limit considerably. In 
 fact, he descended gradually to the minimum 
 of fifty pounds a year, and then the produce of 
 the tax considerably exceeded fourteen millions 
 and a half; a certain proof, that wealth was dis- 
 tributed among a much greater number of per- 
 sons, than was generally supposed. 
 
 It is particularly in fortunes derived from trade 
 and manufactures that the division is observable. 
 The accounts of the income tax for 1812 afford 
 us some very curious information in this respect. 
 Among the number of persons occupied in lucra- 
 tive employments, we find there were then no 
 less than a hundred and twenty-seven thousand, 
 whose incomes were between fifty and two hun- 
 dred pounds a year; twenty-two thousand, from 
 two hundred to a thousand ; three thousand, from 
 one thousand to five thousand; and six hundred, 
 
44 LETTER III. 
 
 from five thousand upwards. Such a result is 
 striking in itself: but it must be remarked, that 
 the calculation is no doubt below the reality; for, 
 if a certain number of individuals gave a faithful 
 declaration of their income, and a few may have 
 found it their interest, to make it appear more 
 than it really was, the great majority of contri- 
 butors would endeavour to reduce the estimate 
 of their income as low as possible. ^u 
 
 Landed property, no doubt, is less divided, 
 than other kinds : but it is not the less true, that 
 our ideas on the Continent, of the accumulation 
 of estates in England, are greatly exaggerated. 
 The facts I have been able to collect, and the 
 conversations I have had on this subject with 
 the best informed men, even lead me to believe, 
 that this accumulation has sensibly diminished 
 within these few years. I am not ignorant, that 
 there are still counties in England, where the 
 parks of some great lords occupy such a vast 
 extent, as to give the country the appearance of 
 the uncultivated forests of America, and that, for 
 several leagues round, not a house is to be seen 
 that is not occupied by some dependant of these 
 
LETTER III. 45 
 
 gigantic proprietors. I am equally aware, that 
 there are others, where the principal landholders, 
 being at the same time the richest monied men, 
 seldom fail to increase their domains by the addi- 
 tion of such estates as are offered for sale in their 
 neighbourhood. But, notwithstanding these ex- 
 ceptions, I retain my opinion, that the actual 
 tendency is toward a division of landed property ; 
 and one proof of the truth of what I advance is 
 the general acknowledgment, that the most ad- 
 vantageous mode of disposing of an estate is, to 
 divide it into a great number of lots. 
 b-You seldom take up an English newspaper, 
 without seeing advertisements of the sale of fixed 
 property, particularly houses, the price of which 
 is within reach of persons of moderate fortune : 
 and in some of the northern counties, Westmore- 
 land in particular, a great number of cottagers 
 are found possessing property, there called states- 
 men, who derive from their possessions from fifty 
 to two hundred pounds a year. I shall remark by 
 the way, that the prosperity of these counties, 
 though not among the most favoured by nature, 
 the independance of character, and thrifty spirit. 
 
46 LETTER III. 
 
 that distinguish their inhabitants, speak loudly 
 in favour of the moral advantages arising from 
 property being not very unequally distributed. 
 The increase of the number of electors is also an 
 indication of the progressive division of property. 
 The counties of York and Lancashire alone rec- 
 kon about sixty thousand electors; and in the 
 whole of England there are scarcely less than 
 four hundred thousand. 
 
 If we pass from the state of the country to that 
 of the legislation, we shall find, that the ideas 
 entertained on the Continent, in this point, are 
 not Jess erroneous. The hereditary continuance 
 of great fortunes in the same families is generally 
 ascribed to perpetual entails. This is true only 
 with respect to Scotland, where, certainly, entails 
 are for a perpetuity, and their employment is very 
 general : but I must not delay to add, that there 
 is not one person of enlightened mind in that 
 country, one lawyer of any authority, who does 
 not regret the existence of such a deplorable 
 system. 
 
 In England, the courts of justice early dis- 
 covered the innumerable inconveniencies of en- 
 
LETTER III. 47 
 
 tails ; and always showed a disposition to confine 
 them within narrow limits. In fact, the pious 
 frauds of the tribunals, sanctioned by the par- 
 liament, have settled the present state of the law 
 on this head. English entails are not now per- 
 petual : they cannot extend beyond the term when 
 the yet unborn heir of the last of the living indi- 
 viduals called to the succession shall be of age ; 
 they may be annulled by the joint consent of the 
 actual possessor, and his immediate heir ; lease; 
 granted by the usufructuary are obligatory on his 
 successor for one-and-twenty years; but, not- 
 withstanding these judicious restrictions, entails 
 are still a fertile source of inconveniences and 
 abuses. 
 
 Besides, feoffments in trust are become at 
 present much more common than direct inhe- 
 ritances : it is not so much to the law of entail, 
 therefore, as to that of primogeniture, that we 
 must ascribe the hereditary transmission of for- 
 tunes to the eldest son, to the detriment of his 
 younger brothers. It is to be observed here, that 
 this law relates only to landed property, goods 
 and chattels being exempt from it : and in such 
 
48 LETTER Ilr. 
 
 a country as England the public funds, shares in 
 canals, money invested in various commercial or 
 manufacturing concerns, form a very considerable 
 portion of its wealth. Let us remember too, that 
 this law is applicable only in cases of intestacy ; 
 and that in England the right of bequeathing by 
 will is unlimited : so that, cases of entail ex- 
 cepted, nothing prevents the father of a family 
 from dividing his property among his children as 
 he pleases, or even disinheriting them altogether. 
 It is not the law, therefore, which is an obstacle 
 to a more equal division of landed property. This 
 obstacle is found chiefly in the state of men's 
 habits and way of thinking ; and as in France a 
 change of the law regulating inheritances would 
 have scarcely any influence on the distribution of 
 property, if the will of testators were left suffi- 
 ciently free, so in England the abolition of the 
 law of primogeniture would not destroy, or at 
 least would destroy very slowly, the almost uni- 
 versal opinion, which consigns to the eldest son the 
 inheritance of the fortune, and the charge of sus- 
 taining the dignity of his family. To be the 
 founder of a family, to have a son and heir, as the 
 
LETT Ed I If, 
 
 49 
 
 English say, is the first thought of a man who 
 enriches himself in any profession: and what 
 would often appear to us an act of injustice seems 
 to them so natural and necessary, that any objec- 
 tions offered to it would scarcely make the least 
 impression on their minds. 
 
 .^Conversing one day with the head of an ancient 
 house, the heir of an immense fortune, of which 
 he is ready to make the noblest use at the call of 
 patriotism or friendship, we spoke of his family, 
 and 1 inquired after the situation of his brothers. 
 "Theyareverywell off," he answered : "my father 
 provided handsomely for them in his will; he left 
 each of them a fortune of so many thousand 
 pounds." Now this fortune, which certainly would 
 be deemed considerable on the Continent, was 
 scarcely a third of the annual income of the 
 eldest. Yet this eldest son, whose generosity is 
 indisputable, far from being shocked at such a 
 disproportion, considered the situation of his 
 brothers as very respectable, and spoke of it 
 to me with perfect satisfaction. Though I am 
 tolerably accustomed to the habits and opinion.^ 
 of England, this was so much at variance with 
 
 E 
 
50 LETTKR III. 
 
 our ideas and moral feelings, that I could not 
 avoid, by way experiment, expressing my sur- 
 prise at it to persons of difterent ranks and opi- 
 nions. No one joined with me in opinion. They 
 all thought, in fact, that the younger brothers had 
 been kindly treated by their father, and that there 
 were few families enjoying similar advantages. 
 I will say more, younger brothers themselves are 
 so thoroughly persuaded of the importance of 
 the law of primogeniture, that, if a proposal were 
 made to them to share alike with the head of the 
 family, the majority would refuse it without hesi- 
 tation. 
 
 That this way of thinking should be generally 
 diffused through the higher ranks of society, in- 
 deed, is not very surprising : but, what is more 
 so, it is equally prevalent in the working classes, 
 and with men who have no other source of wealth 
 than the labour of their hands. I have heard an 
 anecdote on this subject, which is so characte- 
 ristic, that I must beg leave to relate it. 
 
 A French iron-master, travelling in England 
 some years since, to learn the progress made there 
 in the manufacture of iron, went down into a 
 
lJ'.TViM in. 
 
 &t 
 
 coal mine, in one of those districts where radical 
 opinions were most generally diffused among tte 
 people. When in its subterranean galleries, he- 
 conversed with the workmen on the nature aftd 
 duration of their labour, their wages, their foodj 
 and all the particulars of their way of life. Thte- 
 workmen on their part, interested in the conver- 
 sation of a man who displayed au accurate know- 
 ledge of their concerns and wants, and engaged 
 also by the liberality of the opinions he displayed, 
 inquired in turn into the state of the kboumg 
 people in France. " How many workmeA de 
 you employ?" said they. — " Four or five hundred." 
 " That's a pretty good number: and what wag«« 
 do they earn ? What does it cost to feed and 
 maintain a family in the part of France where 
 you live ?" — ** Their wages are lower than yt>ui%: 
 but this is more than made up to them l>y IHj^ 
 cheapness of the necessaries of life."— " ¥oU' are 
 right," said the miners, after having made a littl'ie 
 calculation among themselves, which convinced 
 them, that in reality the condition of the woi*k- 
 men was better in France thari in Englfeiild : 
 " but how long do they work 6very dfiyt*'— ^ 
 
 E 2 
 
52 LETTER III. 
 
 " Eight hours on an average." — ** No more! And 
 what do they do the rest of the day?"- — " They 
 cultivate their land, and work for themselves." — 
 " What do you say, their land ? Then they have 
 property ? they have ground, they have houses 
 of their own?" — '* Certainly: at least most of those 
 have, whom I employ." At these words astonish- 
 ment was depicted on every countenance. *' And 
 this land," said the most intelligent of the miners, 
 '* what becomes of it at the father's death ?" — " It is 
 divided among his children." — "What equally?" 
 — " Of course, or nearly so." — " But a small plot 
 of ground, divided among several children, must 
 be reduced to nothing?" — '* No ; for if one of them 
 be not rich enough to purchase the shares of his 
 brothers, the ground is sold, and passes into the 
 hands of some person, who can keep it entire and 
 improve it." 
 
 Here the conversation ended : but the two ideas, 
 of workmen who were landholders, and of an equal 
 division among the children, had so powerfully 
 struck the English miners, that on the following 
 Sunday they formed the subject of a regular dis- 
 cussion at one of those clubs, in which men, even 
 
LETTER III. 53 
 
 of the lowest class, meet to read the news, or con- 
 verse on their common interests; clubs, where the 
 forms of sound deliberation are much better ob- 
 served in general, than we find them in France in 
 political assemblies of a much higher cast. After 
 a long debate, the matter was put to the vote; and 
 the majority decided, that it was no doubt advan- 
 tageous for workmen to be landholders; but that 
 the inheritance should go to the eldest son, and 
 not be divided. 
 
 Here then we have workmen, low-born, radicals 
 in their opinions or political sentiments, who de- 
 cide against an equal participation, and in favour 
 of the rights of primogeniture. It would be diffi- 
 cult to adduce a stronger proof of the universal 
 sway of this mode of thinking in England 
 
54 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 On the Division of Property as it affects Agriculture and 
 the National Wealth. 
 
 I ATTEMPTED to show you in my last letter, that 
 the transmission of property to the eldest son, to 
 the prejudice of his brothers and sisters, was in 
 England much more the result of the general 
 way of thinking, than the necessary consequence 
 of the laws. It remains to be inquired, whether 
 this way of thinking be founded in reason; and 
 whether they, who would introduce a similar 
 system among us, be desirous of what would 
 prove advantageous, and capable of being carried 
 into practice, or even if they have properly ex- 
 amined the subject of their wishes. 
 
 To reduce a little into order a question of such 
 extent, that it would form of itself the subject of 
 more than one book, we will examine it first as it 
 
LETTER IV. 55 
 
 regards economics, and afterward consider its 
 moral and political influence. 
 
 A nation, as well as an individual, has nothing 
 to subsist on but its income ; that is to say, the 
 rent of its land, the interest of its capital, and the 
 wages of its labour. No doubt, this or that dis- 
 tribution of wealth may improve the cultivation 
 of the soil, promote the increase of capital, or 
 render labour more productive; yet these various 
 improvements have their limits in the nature of 
 things, beyond which it is not in the power of 
 man to proceed. 
 
 When a nation has really made some progress ; 
 when by its industry, its natural resources, and 
 its economy, new riches have been created, it 
 may confer the privilege of enjoying them on a 
 certain number of citizens, without the rest of the 
 community being impoverished. But in a given 
 degree of wealth, one class cannot be favoured 
 unless at the expense of others ; what is given to 
 privileged persons, under whatever title, is neces- 
 sarily taken from the rest of the citizens, and a 
 difference of distribution does not render the 
 whole of a nation either richer or poorer. 
 
66 
 
 LETTER IV 
 
 This truth is so obvious, that it appears almost 
 ridiculous to announce it ; yet there is none more 
 habitually misunderstood by most of those who 
 reason on political economy, I do not say in the 
 drawing-room merely, but in books written ex- 
 pressly on the subject. Every one makes this or 
 that class wealthy, and assigns this or that em- 
 ployment to capital, as his opinion, interest, or 
 whim leads him : but the simple idea, that nothing 
 comes out of nothing, and that by giving to one 
 we take from another, never enters the mind of 
 these reasoners. A country left to the manage- 
 ment of these speculators would be nearly in the 
 condition of Swift's gentleman, who had five 
 thousand a year, but all whose servants at- 
 tempted to apply the whole of his income to the 
 department particularly under his care. *' For five 
 thousand a year," said the coachman, *' my master 
 can have a noble set of horses and carriages." 
 *' With five thousand a year," said the cook, *' my 
 master can keep open house ;" and thus the poor 
 gentleman found himself ruined. 
 
 It is this common error, that has led some men, 
 even such as are well versed in the science of 
 
LETTIiR IV 
 
 finance, the celebrated Hamilton of America 
 among others, to consider a public debt as wealth ; 
 because, he says, this debt is an exchangeable 
 property, that attracts foreign capital; without 
 reflecting, that in this case the foreign capital 
 only takes the place of the national capital that 
 has been consumed, and that the interest pro- 
 duced by this new capital is exactly balanced by 
 the taxes paid by the people. 
 
 It is in consequence of the same error, that the 
 too positive enemies of the funding system, or 
 men who are interested in paying their court to 
 the landholders, propose the reduction of the 
 capital or interest of the debt, an arbitrary change 
 of the conditions stipulated with the creditors, in 
 short, a general or partial bankruptcy, as an effi- 
 cacious method of alleviating the burdens of the 
 nation. They do not consider, that the proprietors 
 of the public funds will be impoverished by every 
 sum bestowed on the payers of taxes; and that 
 consequently the sum total of the wealth of the 
 nation remains the same, except that a violent 
 transfer of property involves in ruin and despair 
 the classes that are robbed ; and that by first 
 
5 8 LETTER IV. 
 
 suspending the demand, and afterward changing 
 its nature, all the calculations of trade and 
 industry are deranged. 
 
 In fine, the same error is the base of the com- 
 mon-place observation, that the partisans of the 
 law of primogeniture never fail to repeat. 
 
 The eldest son, say they, by being the depo- 
 sitary of the whole of the property, maintains the 
 dignity of the family; and serves as a support to 
 his sisters, who, though without fortunes, obtain 
 through the splendor of his name, honourable or 
 advantageous matches, and at all events are 
 secure of an asylum in the paternal mansion. 
 On the other hand, the younger brothers, re- 
 ceiving no fortunes from their father, feel the 
 necessity of procuring one by their own industry : 
 accordingly they embrace some lucrative pro- 
 fession, marry ladies possessed of property, or 
 obtain civil or military employments, or eccle- 
 siastical preferment, through the influence of 
 their elder brother ; and if they fail in their en- 
 deavours, they return and settle with the head of 
 the family, and live on a portion of his income. 
 In this manner the eider branch preserves the 
 
LElTEll IV. 59 
 
 property and its lustre; and the younger branches 
 may in turn become the stock of new families 
 rising to wealth and power. On the contrary, if 
 the property were divided among the children, it 
 would be dissipated at the end of a few genera- 
 tions, and general poverty would be the necessary 
 consequence of this progressive subdivision. 
 
 I need not now inquire, whether it be a very 
 pleasant circumstance to the younger children, 
 to enjoy no independance, to be obliged to adopt 
 the tastes of their elder brother, bend to his 
 whims, and have recourse to his generosity for 
 every undertaking that requires any pecuniary 
 resource ; as I have engaged here to consider the 
 law of primogeniture merely as a question of 
 political economy. In examining the trite argu- 
 ments of the partisans of this system, then, let us 
 adopt the method of geometricians, who assume 
 a problem as solved, and then examine the con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Let us suppose a country, where every species 
 of property belongs exclusively to the first born 
 of each family. What will become of the younger 
 
60 LETTER IV. 
 
 children ? they can have but two alternatives ; 
 either to reside in the house of the eldest, and live 
 on his means, or to enrich themselves by obtain- 
 ing some public office. In the first case, admitting 
 it to be strictly obligatory on the eldest to main- 
 tain his brothers, they will bejoint proprietors of 
 his income ; which in a pecuniary view, and leav- 
 ing moral considerations out of the question, will 
 amount to the same thing, as if they possessed a 
 portion of the capital corresponding to this in- 
 come. In the second case, that of enriching 
 themselves by public offices, the portion of the 
 revenues of the state, that forms their salary, will 
 be the produce of taxes, or a sacrifice on the part 
 of those who pay them ; and these, on our hypo- 
 thesis, can be no other than the elder brothers: 
 so that thus the younger will become proprietors 
 of a portion of the income or capital of the elder, 
 according as the taxes are of such a kind as to 
 affect the one or the other ; and thus in an econo- 
 mical view, without entering into the field of 
 politics, the general state of the country will be 
 the same, as if the division of property had been 
 
LETTER IV. 61 
 
 effected in the bosom of each family, instead of 
 being produced indirectly through the medium of 
 taxation. 
 
 A similar mode of reasoning may be adopted on 
 the subject of marriages. Whether the elder, 
 possessing alone the inheritance of his father, 
 marry a woman without fortune, while the younger 
 enriches himself by espousing a wife with a for- 
 tune equal to that of his elder brother; or each of 
 them, after equally dividing the paternal inheri- 
 tance, double his property by a match bringing 
 him a portion equal to his own ; the condition of 
 the new families will be precisely the same. 
 Let us not satisfy ourselves therefore with empty 
 words, and imagine, that any particular mode of 
 distributing property in a country creates ipso 
 facto new wealth ; and that, after all has been 
 given to the eldest son, there still exists a sort of 
 common fund, on which the younger may draw 
 without taking any share in the property their 
 brothers enjoy. The law of primogeniture no 
 doubt has a considerable influence on the wealth 
 of particular families or particular classes, but it 
 by no means increases that of the nation at large. 
 
62 LETI'I-R IV. 
 
 You generalize the question too much, it will be 
 said to me : the question does not relate to the 
 general wealth of the country, but merely to 
 landed property ; and you will not deny, that an 
 estate equally divided among several children 
 must soon be reduced to portions so small, that it 
 will become impossible to cultivate them with 
 advantage. How can such little proprietors break 
 up wastes, drain marshes, improve the breed of 
 cattle, meliorate agricultural implements; in 
 short, apply to the cultivation of the soil sufficient 
 capital, to derive from it the greatest possible 
 advantage ? 
 
 Let it here be observed, that this is to change 
 completely the aspect of the discussion. We are 
 no longer told of the advantages attached to the 
 concentration of the property in the hands of the 
 eldest son, but of the superiority of farming on a 
 large scale over a small. 
 
 Undoubtedly the application of large capitals 
 to the cultivation of land is advantageous, and 
 considerably increases what is usually called their 
 neat product. But the choice between the regular 
 and uniform cultivation of large farms, assisted by 
 
LETTER IV. 03 
 
 the powers of science; and the motley practice oi' 
 farming in a small way, as it is called, which em- 
 ploys a greater number of hands and less capital ; 
 this choice is governed by circumstances with which 
 the laws can have nothing to do, such as the configu- 
 ration of the country, the quality of the soil, and 
 the nature of the climate. This question is even so 
 distinct from that of the distribution of property, 
 that it is easy to conceive, how farming in a small 
 way is reconcileable with large estates, and in a 
 large way with an equal division of them. Tus- 
 cany and La Brie may serve to exemplify this. In 
 the one, extensive estates are cultivated in small 
 portions by poor farmers, who have no capital but 
 their manual labour ; in the other, wealthy farmers 
 often join in the cultivation of separate inherit- 
 ances, which, from the nature or situation of the 
 land, promote the success of their undertaking. 
 
 But if the application of large capitals to agri- 
 culture be advantageous, as has been said, two 
 conditions are indispensable to this result : one, 
 that the capitals exist ; the other, that injudicious 
 restraints on the sale of fixed property do not 
 prevent the land from coming into the hands of 
 
64 I.tTTER IV. 
 
 those who possess capital. Now 1 deem it in- 
 disputable, that, ill the present state of France, 
 nothing can be so favourable to the gradual in- 
 crease of wealth as this division of property, 
 which inspires a numerous class of persons with 
 habits of order and economy. A scientific mode 
 of agriculture, applying large capitals to more 
 extensive portions of land, would be more pro- 
 ductive, it is true ; but what should we gain by 
 the introduction of this system, by concentrating 
 landed property among a small number of pos- 
 sessors, and by perpetuating it in the same families 
 by means of entails or the law of primogeniture 1 
 The amount of the capital applicable to agriculture 
 being given, if it were devoted to the cultivation 
 of a certain number of farms in the large way, we 
 must leave the rest of the land waste ; or rather 
 we should fall into that lamentable state, of which 
 Spain, Italy, and France before the revolution, 
 afford examples ; and we should see large estates 
 deteriorating in the hands of idle men of wealth, 
 who would squander in wretched frivolities the 
 capital, that should have rendered them fertile. 
 It was much less by increasing the subdivision 
 
LETTER IV. 65 
 
 of estates, than by causing them to pass into more 
 industrious hands, that the revolution so povt'er- 
 fully increased the substantial welfare of France. 
 This subdivision is much more ancient than they 
 are willing to suppose, who charge the revolution 
 with all the mistakes of their minds or passions. 
 It was formerly observed by Machiavel, that, 
 though France was a poor country, the people 
 were happier than others, because there was 
 scarcely a peasant who had not some little inhe- 
 ritance. The equal division of property existed 
 from the remotest times in the provinces where 
 the old Roman law prevailed ; and it was previous 
 to the sale of the national property, that the con- 
 sequences of this system to France alarmed Arthur 
 Young. Since that period the subdivision has 
 increased, immense capitals have been swallowed 
 up by the wars of the revolution, yet who can 
 compare France now with the France of 1789, 
 without being struck by the increase of the 
 national wealth ? 
 
 I have no hesitation in believing, that every 
 artificial direction given to capital by the legisla- 
 ture, every shackle imposed on the division or 
 
66 LETTER IV. 
 
 circulation of property, is detrimental on any 
 hypothesis : but if there be a country on earth 
 where the introduction of a law of entail would 
 be decidedly absurd, it is unquestionably France ; 
 since, in the present state of things, the first effect 
 of such a law would be precisely to establish that 
 division of property, which certain persons con- 
 sider as so vexatious. What in fact is the first 
 condition requisite to the formation of a large 
 estate, if not the power of buying several small 
 ones, to unite them into one ? What therefore can 
 be more inimical to this object, than to render 
 unalienable the present small divisions of land ? 
 
 This reflection is so self-evident, that a demon- 
 stration of it would be superfluous : yet it does 
 not appear to have entered the minds of those, 
 whose favourite scheme it is, to cover France with 
 little, inalienable, burghers' estates, as if an aris- 
 tocracy could be created off hand, or arise from 
 any other elements than time, habits, and the free 
 development of individual powers. 
 
 We have seen above, that a very inaccurate 
 idea of the division of property in England is 
 formed on the Continent. The English are equally 
 
LETTER IV. 67 
 
 mistaken in the results, which they ascribe to the 
 equal participation of estates between children 
 with us. The reasonings of their most distin- 
 guished writers on political economy have some- 
 thing vague and desultory on this question, which 
 forms a contrast to the soundness of their ideas on 
 other points of the science, and seems even to 
 indicate, that they experience a sort of interior 
 struggle between their principles and prejudices. 
 Malthus and M'Culloch themselves, the one in his 
 ** Principles of Political Economy," the other in 
 the article "Cottage System" in the Encyclo- 
 psedia Britannica, have not escaped this defect. 
 Ricardo has not treated the question in his 
 writings, but I have heard him express an opinion 
 more favourable to the system of the division of 
 property, and his name alone is a host. 
 
 Families being much more numerous in England 
 than in France, from various causes which perhaps 
 I shall have an opportunity of investigating with 
 you, the English, who attack the equality of di- 
 vision, commonly figure to themselves the inhe- 
 ritance of the father shared between ten or twelve 
 children ; each of these marrying, and having in 
 
68 LETTER IV. 
 
 turn ten or twelve children more ; so that the last 
 would receive only a hundredth or a hundred and 
 forty-fourth part of his grandfather's property. 
 But this is not the course of things in the world. 
 In fact, if the increase of population followed such 
 a progression, a single family would overspread 
 the whole of the habitable earth in less than ten 
 generations. 
 
 What then is the real state of France ? Does 
 the parcelling out of estates go on increasing in 
 so alarming a manner? By.no means. On the 
 contrary, we see in the neighbourhood of rich 
 towns, and in general in every part where capitals 
 accumulate through trade or manufactures, that 
 landed estates have a tendency to enlarge. It is 
 true, in provinces destitute of these advantages, 
 in Britanny for example, the division of inherit- 
 ances is carried much too far ; but even in such 
 provinces the interests of agriculture will set 
 limits to this cantling. Already it is not un- 
 common, in various parts of France, to see a 
 family of peasants agree, that one of the brothers 
 shall remain proprietor of the paternal farm. The 
 rest receive from him either a sum of money, or a 
 
LETTER IV. 69 
 
 portion of the profits, and remain with him as 
 farm servants, to avoid losing the advantages of 
 farming on a large scale, or to preserve the respect- 
 ability attached to the long possession of the 
 same inheritance. For it is to be observed, in 
 the present state of men's minds, this sort of aris- 
 tocratical feeling is much more common in the 
 lower than in the middle classes. 
 
 Nothing too is more common, both in France 
 and Switzerland, than to see the possessor of a 
 small estate farming one more extensive. I 
 would even say, that a great majority of the 
 farmers are landholders also. The day labourer 
 they employ, is often master of a cot that serves 
 to shelter his family, a garden that feeds his 
 children, and a little field that he can cultivate 
 when he is unemployed, and which enables him to 
 maintain with less inequality the fearful struggle 
 of laborious poverty against exacting wealth. 
 From this general state of things arises a degree 
 of happiness not to be disdained even if attended 
 with no other advantage ; but which becomes one 
 of the happiest results that the social order is 
 capable of producing, when, as we see in the 
 
70 LETTER IV. 
 
 Protestant parts of Switzerland, it is guaranteed 
 by free institutions, and ennobled by a general 
 diffusion of knowledge. 
 
 It is universally an object of ambition with the 
 French peasant, to become the proprietor of a 
 little plot of ground, or to enlarge what he has 
 received from his forefathers. This propensity is 
 is of ancient date, and the revolution merely 
 strengthened it, by furnishing him with opportu- 
 nities of easily gratifying it. This desire, it must 
 be confessed, is not always exercised judiciously : 
 in general he gives more for land than it is worth, 
 because, labour being the necessary condition of 
 his life, he reckons it as nothing when he calcu- 
 lates the produce of the soil ; so that an estate, 
 which, if sold in a lump, would fetch a price only 
 proportionate to its rent, sells in detail after the 
 rate of its gross produce. Our peasants therefore 
 might derive more advantage from their savings, 
 either by placing them in the funds, or in saving 
 banks; or by farming the land of others, and em- 
 ploying their little capitals in the purchase of stock 
 and agricultural implements ; as thus they would 
 obtain much greater interest for their money. 
 
LETTER IV. 71 
 
 But their superstitious predilection for landed 
 property is easily explained. In a country 
 where an uninterrupted succession of public 
 bankruptcies had annihilated confidence, where 
 trade and manufactures were fettered in a thou- 
 sand ways, where justice was impotent, where 
 the relations between the powerful and the weak, 
 the rich and the poor, were in the hands of 
 arbitrary power, men of the labouring class must 
 have been habituated to trust only to solid and 
 palpable wealth. 
 
 In England, on the contrary, where every kind 
 of right guaranteed by the law is inexpugnable ; 
 where the stability of all things is carried to 
 excess ; where public opinion, going hand in hand 
 with financial science, has always caused the en- 
 gagements of the state towards its creditors to be 
 respected ; the possessor of a small capital has 
 justly thought, that the purchase of land was not 
 the most profitable way in which he could employ 
 it. Even they, whose habits and inclinations 
 have rendered them attached to agriculture, have 
 preferred renting farms to purchasing ; and the 
 length of leases has given farmers many of the 
 
72 LETTER IV. 
 
 advantages as well as enjoyments annexed to the 
 possession of them. In fact, if we calculate the 
 chances of human life, and the various circum- 
 stances that may abridge its duration, or change 
 the condition of individuals, we shall find, that 
 possession secured for a long term of years differs 
 very little from absolute proprietorship, and that ^ 
 the difference between them is greater in the 
 eyes of imagination than in those of reason. 
 
 That England has risen above almost every 
 other country in Europe, by the progress of its 
 agriculture, is incontestable ; but I have not here 
 to inquire what are the different causes, that, 
 under the omnipotent aegis of liberty, have pro- 
 duced this result ; neither is it incumbent on me 
 to prove, that it is in no degree owing to entails, 
 or the law of primogeniture. In fact if we re- 
 flect, that in Italy, in Spain, and wherever else 
 the system of irresponsible freehold succession 
 has been introduced, it has occasioned the dete- 
 rioration of land, and the impoverishment even of 
 those for whose benefit it was invented, we shall 
 be convinced, that the agricultural prosperity of 
 England must be ascribed to other causes. If a 
 
LETTER IV. 73" 
 
 tree abounding in sap be planted in a fertile soil, 
 it may be subjected to a bad system of manage- 
 ment perhaps with impunity, its natural vigour 
 may triumph over the obstacles opposed to its 
 growth ; but we must not ascribe to the errors 
 of the manager, what is owing to its strength of 
 ^vegetation. 
 
74 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Consequence of the Division of Property ; its influence on 
 Population and Morals. 
 
 Our correspondence is too hasty to allow us, I 
 will not say to sift thoroughly, but even to touch, 
 on all the questions, that arise on the division of 
 property: some however are too important to be 
 passed over in silence ; and among these is the 
 influence of the equality of its division on the in- 
 crease of population. It is the principle of popu- 
 lation that brings political economy within the 
 sphere of morality and religion ; and it is in this 
 respect particularly, that Mai thus has so greatly 
 advanced the science: but the greater the impor- 
 tance of discoveries made relative to this question, 
 the more fatal mistakes may prove. 
 
 One of the arguments most frequently repeated 
 in England against an equal division of property. 
 
LETTER V. 75 
 
 is the tendency ascribed to it of increasing popu- 
 lation, in a ratio infinitely more rapid than that of 
 subsistence. " By the division of property," says 
 Arthur Young, "you will soon arrive at a point, 
 w^here the land, hov^^ever cultivated, cannot feed 
 a greater number of mouths; yet men will retain 
 that simplicity of manners, which is favourable to 
 early marriages. Are not the consequences of 
 such a system, the most frightful we can imagine? 
 By persevering in it you would soon exceed the 
 population of China, where we see unhappy crea- 
 tures, who seem to have been brought into the 
 world only to perish through want or starvation, 
 greedily disputing the stinking carcases of dogs, 
 cats, mice, and the filthy remains of animals of all 
 kinds. Small properties subdivided are the 
 greatest source of misery we can conceive ; and 
 this fatal system has already produced such rava- 
 ges in France, that all division of land below a 
 certain number of acres ought incontestably to 
 be prohibited by law." (Travels in France^ vol. ], 
 J9.413, 414.J 
 
 Thus does a traveller justly celebrated for his 
 agricultural knowledge express himself: and the 
 
76 LETTER V. 
 
 learned writer of the article Cottage system, in the 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, quoting this passage in 
 support of his arguments, seems to adopt it him- 
 self, and give it all the weight of his authority. 
 Is there, I ask, a more extraordinary proof of the 
 influence of a prevailing prejudice over the most 
 enlightened minds ? In fact, while certain ideas 
 are confined to inert bodies, it is not difficult for 
 independent men to emancipate themselves from 
 them, and combat them: but when they become 
 almost universal in a country, the minds of those 
 who think most justly are influenced by them; 
 and like the aeronaut, who undertakes to navigate 
 in a single element, the compass of truth ceases 
 to be their guide, they are carried along by the 
 atmosphere that surrounds them, and have no 
 longer any standard by which they can judge of 
 their course. 
 
 To assert, as many ignorant or superficial 
 travellers have done, that France is in a state of 
 progressive wretchedness ; and that the excess of 
 its population, in comparison with its means of 
 subsistence, threatens it every moment with the 
 horrors of famine; would be such an excess of 
 
LETTER V. 77 
 
 absurdity, that they do not venture bluntly to 
 declare as much: but wait a little, say they; this 
 fatal equality of division has not yet produced 
 all its fruits; perhaps at the present instant it has 
 some deceptive advantages, and it is at some future 
 time, that the abyss of evils it prepares for you 
 will be disclosed. We have already had occasion 
 to observe, that the division of property with us 
 dates much earlier, than is usually supposed. 
 But besides, is France the only country, where 
 this equality of division is in full play ? Has not 
 a similar law prevailed in Switzerland for ages? 
 Is not the division of landed property there carried 
 much farther, than in any province of France? 
 Yet who can have studied, who can even have tra- 
 versed that fine country, without perceiving evi- 
 dent signs of prosperity, and of that morality, 
 which is at once the effect and the cause of the 
 well-being of its inhabitants? 
 
 The estate of Coppet is in that part of French 
 Switzerland, which, after having been prepared 
 for liberty by the Protestant religion, by public 
 instruction, and by the paternal if not enlightened 
 government of the republic of Berne, now enjoys 
 
78 LETTER V. 
 
 with happiness and tranquillity the benefits of 
 independence. The land around me is so divided, 
 that the majority of proprietors possess less than 
 an acre of ground. Nevertheless, I believe I may 
 affirm, that no part of Europe exhibits an equal 
 image of prosperity. Far from the population 
 being superabundant, labour there is dearer than 
 in any other country on the Continent. The active 
 charity of the well-disposed scarcely finds any 
 wants to relieve : and the assistance, received with 
 gratitude when given with kindness, would be 
 proudly refused were it offered haughtily. There 
 is no jealous hatred toward those, who are more 
 favoured by fortune; no pride that renders man 
 averse to any useful occupation; none of that 
 servile disposition, which seeks indemnification 
 for humility to the great in arrogance toward the 
 little; everywhere independence, and everywhere 
 happiness. No doubt an extreme division of pro- 
 perty may have an injurious tendency to promote 
 too early marriages: but it is advantageously 
 combated by a sentiment of foresight, the fruit 
 of morality, information, and comfort, which 
 suggests to a man, that he ought not to become 
 
LETTER V. > 79 
 
 the master of a family, till he has acquired the 
 means of providing for its subsistence, or give 
 birth to more children, than he can bring up in a 
 condition equal to his own. In the course of 
 forty years, the increase of population has been 
 little perceptible in that part of Switzerland, with 
 which I am best acquainted; and in the same 
 period of time the most rapid progress is ob- 
 servable in the culture of the land, and in the 
 welfare of the inhabitants. 
 
 The example of Ireland is always quoted by 
 the English economists in support of their argu- 
 ments against the division of property; and it 
 is easy to conceive, that their minds are pre- 
 occupied by such a distressing spectacle. See, 
 they say, with what alarming rapidity the sub- 
 division of land has increased the population be- 
 yond measure, and carried wretchedness to its 
 height. Previously to the year 1784, Ireland 
 was still a grazing country, divided into farms of 
 large extent. At that period an erroneous sys- 
 tem of bounties on the exportation of corn and 
 other matters of the first necessity, produced an 
 artificial increase of prices, the consequence of 
 
80 LETTER V. 
 
 which was bringing under the plough all the 
 land susceptible of it. But as want of capital 
 rendered it impossible to find farmers capable of 
 cultivating large estates, the proprietors found 
 themselves obliged, first to divide them, and after- 
 ward to sub-divide them among the children of 
 their farmers. Others, urged by the desire of 
 increasing their political influence through mul- 
 tiplying electors devoted to their commands, 
 granted leases for life of a great number of small 
 farms to peasants, who thus. acquired the right of 
 voting. Others, lastly, adopted the cotter system, 
 at present become nearly general in Ireland, which 
 consists in giving to labourers, instead of wages, a 
 little plot of ground to cultivate, without how- 
 ever making them proprietors of the soil. "What 
 has been the result of these erroneous measures ? 
 The population of Ireland has increased in an 
 exorbitant degree: in 1790, it was scarcely four 
 millions: in 1821, it was nearly seven.* The 
 
 * In England, they reckon three acres and a half to an 
 inhabitant: in -Ireland, only two and five ninths on an aver- 
 age, and scarcely one acre in the most populous counties. 
 
LETTER V. Si 
 
 meanest food that can support life, the potato, 
 is become the regulator of wages, as well as the 
 only limit of the increase of the agricultural race; 
 and unhappy Ireland is now covered with an 
 improvident people, without resource against the 
 least change in the course of the seasons, con- 
 stantly threatened with famine and all the evils 
 in its train, and ever prone to the transition from 
 servile apathy, to a ferociousness that knows no 
 restraint. 
 
 I do not deny any of these facts, though 1 have 
 had no opportunity of verifying them, as I have 
 not visited Ireland ; but I am far from drawing 
 the same inferences from them against an equal 
 division of property, which others have done. In 
 the first place, one general observation strikes my 
 mind : this is, that, as in viewing the prosperity 
 of England we must never lose sight of the omni- 
 potent influence of liberty and justice, so, when 
 inquiring into the causes of the wretchedness of 
 Ireland, we must place in the first rank in all our 
 calculations religious intolerance, want of instruc- 
 tion, a bad choice of magistrates, and in short all 
 the fatal consequences of an oppressive system of 
 
 G 
 
82 LETTEll V. 
 
 government. Besides, and this is the true point 
 in question, there are not in the whole world two 
 more distinct conditions of life, I would almost 
 say more opposite, than that of a poor farmer in 
 the service of a great lord, and that of an inde- 
 pendant small proprietor. The consciousness of 
 property, the duties and enjoyments attached to 
 it, the responsibility it imposes, unfold in the one 
 all the social virtues, to which the other remains 
 for ever a stranger. Property gives birth to fore- 
 sight, the desire of bettering our condition, the 
 fear of a decline in that of our family, and respect 
 for the rights of others, a natural consequence of 
 that we claim for our own : while the wretched 
 Irish cultivator, always threatened with the want 
 of absolute necessaries, always dependant on the 
 caprice of a master or manager, seeks in the arms 
 of his wife the only enjoyment he has in common 
 with the rest of mankind ; trusting for the subsis- 
 tence of his children to the compassion of his 
 master, till the moment when urged to the utmost 
 by want he takes barbarous vengeance on the 
 injustice of society. 
 This essential distinction has been entirely lost 
 
LETTER V. 83 
 
 sight of, or at least greatly neglected, by those 
 English economists, who have examined the 
 question, whether the distribution of small plots 
 of ground to indigent families would be an effica- 
 cious means of checking the progress of the poor 
 rates. Almost all have decided in the negative. 
 I would boldly answer " No," if the object were 
 small farms: "Yes," if it were small properties. 
 But this question of the poor rates is so vast and 
 important, that we cannot enter into it here ; and 
 I must be satisfied with asking your permission 
 to discuss it hereafter, should our correspondence 
 be prolonged. 
 
 Observe too, before we proceed to other consi- 
 derations, that the example of Ireland proves 
 nothing in regard to the influence of the law of 
 primogeniture on the extent of cultivation. In 
 fact, the law of succession is nearly the same in 
 Ireland as in England ; yet these two countries 
 stand at the opposite extremities of the agricultu- 
 ral scale. Why is this, if not that in one, large 
 capitals have produced large farms, while in the 
 other, capital having fled before the face of 
 
 g2 
 
84 LETTER V. 
 
 oppression, proprietors have been obliged to 
 divide their land into small farms? 
 
 The English economists, in general so able at 
 observing facts and drawing just inferences from 
 them, have their minds for the most part so 
 vs^arped on the question of the division of pro- 
 perty, that the most palpable truths escape them. 
 The population of France in 1789, according to 
 the reports of the Constituent Assembly, was 
 26,300,000: it is now about 30,000,000. This, 
 certain English writers represent to us as an 
 alarming fact ; while they forget, that the number 
 of inhabitants of England and Wales has risen 
 from 9,168,000 to 12,218,000. Thus the popu- 
 lation of France has increased fourteen per cent 
 in thirty-five years, amounting to eight per cent in 
 twenty years; and during the same twenty years 
 the increase of the population in England has been 
 thirty- three per cent, or four times as much. Such 
 a rapid increase sufficiently proves, that the con- 
 centration of landed property has not all the effi- 
 cacy that is ascribed to it, in keeping up a due ba- 
 lance between the quantity of food and number of 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 85 
 
 its consumers. I will even go farther : I will ven- 
 ture to assert, that entails and the law of primoge- 
 niture have a tendency to increase the number of 
 children in the higher classes, nearly in the same 
 way as the poor rates tend to the augmentation of 
 indigent families; namely, by preventing the 
 father from cautiously looking forward to the lot 
 that awaits his children. Under the system o f 
 equal division, a man would not have a greater 
 number of children than he could make provision 
 for: under that of primogeniture he is sure, that 
 the splendour of his name will be maintained by 
 the eldest son, and his vanity is satisfied. This 
 sentiment, so common among the wealthy class, 
 even in England, ceases with him to operate in 
 aid of prudence; and the age or health of his wife 
 alone limits the number of his children. Without 
 denying, that purity of manners is one of the prin- 
 cipal reasons, that account for families in the 
 higher ranks of society being much more numerous 
 in England than in France, I have no hesitation 
 in believing, that the motive I have just pointed 
 out has its share in the result. 
 
 You are not sensible of the force and beauty of 
 
86 LETTER V. 
 
 pride of family, the English often say to foreigners, 
 who discuss with them the point in question. Cer- 
 tainly we are : but there is something that exceeds 
 in beauty and in force the pride of family ; and that 
 is family aifection. The one may spring from 
 vanity or interest; the source of the other is in the 
 heart. One may be excited artificially by insti- 
 tutions, that sacrifice the happiness of individuals 
 to the lustre of a race; the other rises spontane- 
 ously from similitude of conditions, and a com- 
 munity of interests and enjoyments. 
 
 The only family relation that exists in England 
 in its full beauty is the conjugal tie. Nowhere 
 do we find in the same degree faithful protection 
 on the one hand, with tender and religious attach- 
 ment on the other. Nowhere do we see wives 
 share with equal courage and simplicity the 
 pains and dangers of their husbands, in whatever 
 career their duty may call them. This conjugal 
 affection unquestionably is not without influence 
 on the reciprocal love between parents and chil- 
 dren; but it operates more particularly at that 
 period of life, when paternal affection amalgamates 
 with conjugal love. When the sons attain the age 
 
LETTER V, 87 
 
 of manhood, when the fathers begin to grow old, 
 it cannot be denied, that there is a degree of 
 roughness in their mutual intercourse. 
 
 The very word employed by a child in address- 
 ing his father, sir, seems to indicate forced respect, 
 rather than affectionate confidence. The eldest 
 son, certain from his birth, that the title and 
 estate of his father will belong to him, is ac- 
 customed at an early age to consider himself as 
 independant : what he receives from his parents 
 appears in his eyes rather a debt than a favour : 
 and frequently he conceives he has a right to con- 
 trol the conduct of his father in the employment 
 of a property, which he considers beforehand as 
 his own. The father on his part, following the 
 disposition of his rank, prides himself on the heir of 
 his name, and neglects for him the condition of his 
 other children ; or, on the contrary, sees a rival in 
 his successor, and is anxious to deprive him of 
 every thing he can take from the estate. 
 
 The death of a father, or that of an elder bro- 
 ther, to whom there is a hope of succeeding, are 
 the subjects of jests on the English stage, that are 
 not merely tolerated, but applauded ; while with 
 
88 LETTER V. 
 
 US they would be revolting to the rudest audience. 
 I am far from applying these remarks more gene- 
 rally than would be consistent with justice: but 
 I have seen instances of what I advance, and the 
 mere fact, that such sentiments can germinate in 
 a country so moral and religious as England, 
 evinces a defect in its institutions. 
 
 To hope that the affections may remaintotally 
 uninfluenced by interest; and unaltered by laws, 
 that render the condition of the members of the 
 same family so disproportionate; is to expect 
 more from human nature, than its weakness and 
 corruption will admit. 
 
 *' Be it as it may," said Dr. Johnson, '' the law of 
 primogeniture has one great advantage : it makes 
 but one fool in each family." This witticism in- 
 cludes two assertions: one, which I think very 
 questionable, that the want of fortune excites the 
 activity of younger brothers ; the other, which is 
 true in general, but not applicable to England, 
 that the certainty of enjoying a large fortune 
 extinguishes the intellectual faculties of the 
 eldest. 
 
 The first of these assertions may have some 
 
lettp:r v. 89 
 
 foundation, when applied only to the most opulent 
 families in the first ranks of society. Suppose a 
 man to have an income of fifteen thousand a year, 
 and divide it equally among five children: each 
 will have an income of three thousand a year, or 
 just enough to enable him to live comfortably, 
 without allowing him however to undertake any 
 thing on a great scale, as the improvement of 
 agriculture, working of mines, or cutting canals 
 for the benefit of trade ; in short to contribute to 
 the welfare of his country in promoting his own. 
 It is probable then, that each of these five sons 
 will spend his life in idleness, and his useless ex- 
 istence will leave no trace behind it. If, on the con- 
 trary, the whole of the fortune had been left to the 
 eldest; the younger sons, accustomed to the view 
 of high life in their paternal mansion, and aware, 
 at the same time, that they must depend on their 
 own exertions, to attain similar enjoyments; will 
 begin at an early age to exert their faculties with 
 energy, and rise by their talents to that rank, in 
 which his birth had placed the head of the family. 
 The eldest on the other hand, charged with 
 the management of a large fortune, will be obliged 
 
90 LETTER V. 
 
 to acquire at least some knowledge; his under- 
 standing will be unfolded by practical application; 
 and thus, instead of five men of mediocrity, you 
 will have perhaps one useful man, and four of 
 distinction. Such at least is the reasoning 1 have 
 frequently heard in England. But families with 
 fifteen thousand a year are so far from numerous, 
 and of so little importance in the general order of 
 society, that a system of laws advantageous to 
 them alone is not worth consideration. If we de- 
 scend from these privileged heights, we shall find, 
 that for one younger brother, whose ambition has 
 been excited by want of fortune, and who has ulti- 
 mately triumphed over every obstacle, a hundred 
 have failed in their attempts, and spend their lives 
 in idleness, for want of a capital allowing them to 
 engage with advantage in some branch of business. 
 In every country on the Continent where the 
 system of entailed estates has been introduced, 
 the intellectual nullity of the nobility is become 
 proverbial; and the grandees of Spain exonerate 
 me from the trouble of seeking any other examples 
 of this indisputable fact. If Great Britain form an 
 exception in this respect, as in so many others. 
 
LETTER V. 91 
 
 let US be careful, I repeat, not to ascribe this 
 phenomenon to the institution itself, by which its 
 development has been limited ; let us recur to its 
 true causes, and not fall into the everlasting so- 
 phism of common minds, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. 
 I will suppose it to be said: there is a country 
 in the world, where large estates are in part en- 
 tailed, and where all are subjected to the law of 
 primogeniture. The eldest sons alone inherit the 
 property of the father, to the exclusion of their 
 brothers and sisters. They are treated from in- 
 fancy as hereditary princes; and are accustomed 
 at an early age to look on their parents only as the 
 usufructuaries of an estate, which they are certain 
 of possessing entire at some future day. In this 
 country the nobility, that is, in the English sense 
 of the term, the men of title and their eldest sons, 
 enjoy numerous prerogatives, independently of 
 their constitutional privileges. These preroga- 
 tives commence at college, where they are seated 
 at a separate table, distinct from that of simple 
 gentlemen or citizens. Young men, already their 
 equals or superiors in talent, and destined per- 
 haps some day to become their superiors in 
 
92 LETTER V. 
 
 dignity, stand while they dine, and do not begin 
 their dinner till they have finished. On quitting 
 the university, they take by right of birth alone 
 those degrees, which others obtain only after a 
 strict examination. Scarcely are they of age, 
 when a seat in the House of Commons is ready 
 for them, without any farther trouble than appear- 
 ing as a candidate, and making some pecuniary 
 sacrifices, which the fortune of their father renders 
 of little importance. During the v/hole course of 
 their lives, however mean their abilities may be, 
 their title ensures them attention and respect. 
 From the sorry pleasure of being the first to enter 
 a room, to the important privilege of being the 
 hereditary rulers of their country, and to the noble 
 prerogative of having an influence on the fate of 
 their country by their vote, there is no advantage 
 in society that is not securedto them by their rank, 
 without having to merit it by any effort, without 
 any fear of being deprived of it, though neither 
 their talents nor their characters legitimate their 
 claim. 
 
 After having drawn the picture of such a 
 country a priori, let me ask any man of sense. 
 
LETTER V. 93 
 
 wherever he may have been born, " What must 
 be the result of such a frame of society? What 
 effect must it have on the moral and intellectual 
 state of the higher classes ? " Is there one, who will 
 hesitate to answer? " The nobility of the coun- 
 try, of which you speak, cannot avoid falling- into 
 a state of progressive degradation of intellect. 
 Ignorance and folly are the natural effects of the 
 system you have delineated." 
 
 Would he be wrong in drawing such a con- 
 clusion ? Assuredly not. Well, nothing is of my 
 invention ; the country of which I have spoken, 
 is Great Britain : yet we need only run over the 
 list of the House of Peers, to be convinced, that 
 no class of men surpasses or even equals the 
 English aristocracy in knowledge, in talents, and 
 in virtues. The reason is, this aristocracy is far 
 from being exclusive, as on the Continent, but 
 always open to whoever is worthy of a place in it; 
 it is not exempt from the fertilizing principle of 
 rivalry; and among a free people, public opinion 
 is more potent in exciting the faculties, than the 
 privileges of birth and fortune are in extinguishing 
 them. 
 
94 LETTER V. 
 
 It says to the young heir of a patrician family : 
 the customs of the university confer on you the 
 privilege of obtaining without effort those honours, 
 which to others are the fruit of assiduous appli- 
 cation ; but the love of learning, the esteem of 
 your fellow students, are above this privilege. 
 It says to the nobleman, arrived to the possession 
 of his title : the laws and customs of your country 
 grant you extensive and easy prerogatives: you 
 may enjoy them in idleness : no one will dispute 
 them; no one will oblige you to do any thing 
 for a social system, that has done so much for 
 you: but, if your heart be animated with ge- 
 nerous thoughts, I have higher rewards to offer 
 you : merit the respect of the good, and the ap- 
 plause of an enlightened public. 
 
 This is the secret of the moral superiority of the 
 English aristocracy, and not entailed estates, not 
 the law of primogeniture. Let us not persuade 
 ourselves, that privileges, like the guest of the 
 satyr in the fable, can blow hot and cold : can 
 make brutes in Spain and Austria, and men of 
 distinction in England. 
 
95 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 Political influence of the Division of Property. 
 
 It remains for us to consider the division of 
 property with respect to its political influence; 
 but this subject is so vast, that I can scarcely- 
 run over with you a few of the arguments em- 
 ployed in England by the partisans of large 
 estates. 
 
 These arguments are of two kinds : some are 
 taken from the interests of the monarchy, others 
 have in view the maintenance and developement 
 of liberty . 
 
 ** The most essential condition of a monarchy," 
 we are told, *' is, that between the king and the 
 people there shall be a well-understood gradation 
 of aristocratic bodies, serving as a support to the 
 
96 LETTER VI. 
 
 throne, and defending it against the attacks of 
 democracy. Remember the Constituent Assem- 
 bly. It insulated the royal power amid insti- 
 tutions completely republican, like an obelisk 
 erected on level ground. The consequence was, 
 the first popular tempest was sufficient to over- 
 turn it. An hereditary peerage in a constitutional, 
 a privileged nobility in an absolute monarchy, is 
 indispensable to the stability of the regal edifice : 
 but as wealth is one of the necessary elements of 
 that splendour, with which an aristocracy should 
 be surrounded, it follows, that a monarchy cannot 
 dispense with entailed estates, the law of primo- 
 geniture, and other institutions, that have a ten- 
 dency to concentrate property, and perpetuate it 
 in the same family." 
 
 Supposing this last reasoning to be just, I 
 should not the less reject the whole of an argu- 
 mentation, the chief fault of which consists in 
 confounding the means with the end. 
 
 The difterent kinds of government are only 
 methods invented by society, to secure the mo- 
 rality and happiness of nations. Of these methods 
 T allow monarchy to be the most perfect : still it 
 
r.ETTF.n VI. 
 
 9: 
 
 is but a means; it does not of itself constitute an 
 end, that is to be obtained at any price. 
 
 If then it were demonstrated on one hand, that 
 certain institutions are indispensable to the dura- 
 tion of a monarchy, and on the other, that these 
 institutions are detrimental to morality and hap- 
 piness, we should be authorized in drawing 
 an inference far from favourable to monarchical 
 government. If an ulema proved by learned 
 arguments, that the custom, which authorizes the 
 Grand Seignior to cut off fourteen heads a day 
 without any reason but his own caprice, is an 
 institution essential to the power of the Sub- 
 lime Porte, assuredly we should not conclude, 
 that this atrocious custom should be retained, 
 but that the mussulman tyranny should be de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 While employing this example as an argu- 
 ment ad ahsurdum, do not suppose that I think 
 of making a comparison between the despotism 
 of Constantinople and a limited monarchy, be- 
 tween the entailment of estates and the arbitrary 
 cruelties of a Sultan. I believe, that liberty and 
 justice may prosper under a monarchy, provided 
 
 H 
 
98 LETTER VI. 
 
 publicity and the intervention of the country take 
 place in the management of its affairs. I am 
 equally inclined to believe, that, in the present 
 state of society in Europe, an hereditary peerage, 
 rich and independant, may be a useful institution 
 in some countries, which it would be imprudent 
 to renounce, where it already exists, and sub- 
 stitute for it arbitrary schemes, or inventions not 
 sanctioned by experience. But precisely because 
 such is ray opinion, I would avoid saying, that an 
 artificial distribution of property by laws, the 
 inconveniencies of which we have acknowledged, 
 is a necessary condition of the establishment and 
 duration of this peerage. 
 
 Where the true elements of its existence are 
 found, it will prosper without the aid of these 
 laws. On the contrary, where the state of men's 
 opinions and manners are repugnant to it, entails 
 cannot impart to it that moral force, which alone 
 can render it advantageous to the monarch and to 
 the people. 
 
 In our day, public employments, particularly 
 on the Continent, are the chief source of wealth 
 in the higher ranks of society. If this be an evil 
 
LlilTTiK VI. 1^ 
 
 in many respects, it may alsQ be urged, that they 
 who fill these employments, being thus placed in 
 a more enviable situation, have every eye fixed 
 upon them, and find themselves so much the 
 more amenable to public opinion. This is the case 
 at least where the spirit of party has not cor- 
 rupted the moral sense, and where men in power 
 do not carry the want of shame so far, as even to 
 be vain of the very reproaches that should over- 
 whelm them with confusion. Public employments, 
 we have said, are most commonly the origin of 
 large fortunes. Now in a monarchy these em- 
 ployments are the natural appanage of those who 
 surround the throne, and who add to the advan- 
 tage of leisure that of being habitually near the 
 distributors of power ; particularly when, being 
 invested with an indefeisible office, it becomes of 
 importance to the crown, to secure their votes in 
 the legislative assembly. The elevated rank too, 
 in which they are placed, facilitates their obtain- 
 ing advantageous matches : that wealth attracts 
 wealth, is a fact acknowledged at all times, and 
 in all countries. What occasion is there then of 
 accelerating this natural propensity by institutions, 
 
 h2 
 
100 LETTER VI. 
 
 which, as we have seen, endanger the welfare of 
 all for the pretended advantage of a few? I say 
 the pretended advantage; for, wherever trade and 
 industry do not concur, under the protection of a 
 free government, in the augmentation of capital, 
 entails alone have never sufficed to maintain the 
 splendour of families. Sismondi has demonstrated 
 this in a very striking manner, in the first volume 
 of his New Principles of Political Economy. 
 
 Considered with respect to the interests of 
 liberty, the subject before us, I confess, becomes 
 more delicate, and more difficult to discuss. The 
 arguments of the partisans of large properties, 
 those of Malthus in particular,* acquire here a 
 precision, that fails them on other points of the 
 question. 
 
 In the system of an equal division of property, 
 say they, it necessarily happens, that the state 
 alone is enriched by the sacrifices of those who 
 pay taxes; but no one acquires such a fortune or 
 consideration in society, as enables him, when it 
 
 Principles of Political Economy. 
 
LETTER VI. 101 
 
 is requisite, to oppose a barrier to the encroacli- 
 ments of power, or the aberrations of popular 
 opinion ; to protect the weak, and support and 
 encourage the poor and conscientious mah; who 
 refuses to bend the knee bdb re an unjii'fet order, 
 or bow to the caprices of a victorious party. 
 Every one having precisely that degree of fortune, 
 which secures his welfare only on condition of 
 paying constant attention to his own affairs, no 
 one has any leisure to devote gratuitously to the 
 concerns of the public; the mind becomes indif- 
 ferent to every thing in which it is not personally 
 interested; men of quiet dispositions sink into 
 apathy; the active seek after places, as the sim- 
 plest means of enriching themselves; and selfish- 
 ness and vanity daily increase the influence of 
 government. " Such a country," says Malthus, 
 *' is the soil for establishing a military despotism." 
 With sorrow I confess, these reproaches are 
 not without foundation. It is but too true, that 
 we have found ourselves without defence against 
 the different systems, that oppressive or docile 
 governments have imposed on our country: 
 we have experienced them; we have passed 
 
10^ LETTER VT. 
 
 from one to another with lamentable facility; and 
 the generous beings, who have retained in their 
 hearts the sacred flame, have not been sufficiently 
 strong, nor sufficiently tranquil in the possession 
 of tlieir political importance, to rally a number of 
 friends around their standard, and resist by turns 
 the never changing yoke of a despot, and the irre- 
 gular tyranny of the multitude. 
 
 But is it to the equal division of property, that 
 we must impute these sad results? Do the laws 
 of entail and primogeniture possess the wondrous 
 secret of curing all political disorders ? England 
 itself proves the contrary : for England also has had 
 its period of weakness, and even of servility. The 
 privileges of its nobilityandof its corporate bodies, 
 and the independance of its great landholders, 
 have been far from sufficient always to repel 
 tyranny, or even to enter into a contest v/ith it- 
 There are events of such magnitude, as to dis- 
 concert all institutions, so weighty, as to break 
 down all resistance, because they are designed by 
 Providence to change, not the forms merely, but 
 the essence of society. Such was the French 
 revolution: and far from supposing, that we must 
 
LETTER VI. 103 
 
 seek in the equal division of property the cause of 
 those public virtues we still want, I find in it, on 
 the contrary, the source of most of the qualities 
 we possess. The consciousness of having pro- 
 perty, supplies in some measure the place of that 
 independance of character, with which citizens 
 are elsewhere inspired by the knowledge and 
 €xercise of their rights. The day labourer feels 
 himself less at the mercy of his wealthy employer, 
 when he has a plot of ground he can call his own. 
 The placeman is less docile and compliant to 
 those in power, if he possess a patrimony, that 
 secures him at least from absolute want. 
 
 The throng of persons in office bequeathed to 
 us by the imperial government is not the least of 
 the evils, for which we are indebted to that fatal 
 period. At no time was the number of places at 
 the nomination of government in any country 
 carried to such an absurd excess as in France. 
 If a list of those belonging to the department of 
 the administration of justice alone were shown 
 to an Englishman or an American, it would ap- 
 pear to him scarcely credible. What shall we 
 say to that of the home department, or that of the 
 
104 LETTER VI. 
 
 finances? But all these offices, many of which 
 would be more beneficially filled if they were 
 executed gratuitously, and without any other 
 incentive than the public opinion; while still 
 more are altogether superfluous, and a mere waste 
 of time and intellect ; are not on these accounts 
 sinecures, but very far from it. 
 
 The magistrate who sits throughout the year 
 to decide causes, that would disappear under a 
 better system of judicial proceedings and regula- 
 tions ; the man in office who spends tedious 
 mornings in writing circular letters, filling up 
 forms, making out lists, and directing by a thou- 
 sand pedantic rules, transactions, that should be 
 left free to the good sense of the people ; are both 
 assuredly engaged in labours, that must appear 
 useless to the eye of reason. But they are by no 
 means idle: they deem themselves necessary 
 wheels of the great machine of society; and when 
 at the year's end they compare their very moderate 
 salaries with the time they havQ ^devoted to the 
 duties of their office, they may justly imagine, 
 that they have m de no very advantageous bar- 
 gain with the government. In their minds, as 
 
LETTER VI. ]05 
 
 well as ill the general opinion, the notion of a 
 vested right is attached to the long possession of 
 a place ; and accordingly v^^e see in this country, 
 where the greatest political injustice sometimes 
 passes without any observation, the suppression 
 of a place seldom fails to excite the commisera- 
 tion and discontent of the public. 
 
 The question presents itself under a different 
 aspect in England, where placemen are much 
 better paid in proportion to the labour they per- 
 form ; and where the government, content with 
 securing a large portion of influence by the favours 
 it dispenses, does not pretend, as with us, to do 
 every thing, to see every thing, to interfere in the 
 slightest relations between man and man, and 
 guide them as in leading strings. 
 
 It is unquestionably advantageous, that many 
 public functions should be entrusted gratuitously 
 to men of wealth and property, as independant in 
 circumstances as in character ; but this advan- 
 tage has no inseparable connexion with the law of 
 primogeniture. We even see by the side of 
 families, who deem it a duty and an hereditary 
 honour to defend the liberties of the people. 
 
106 LETTER Vr. 
 
 others, and these in great number, who yield 
 themselves without reserve to ministerial influence, 
 through the desire and almost necessity of ob- 
 taining for their younger children preferment, 
 posts, or sinecures. 
 
 That the independant resistance of a wealthy 
 and enlightened aristocracy may be ranked in the 
 number of guaranties of freedom under a mo- 
 narchy, I do not deny: but, without repeating 
 what has been already said, 1 believe the im- 
 portance of such a security is greatly exaggerated 
 even in England ; and that it would soon become 
 illusory, were it deprived of other institutions, 
 which enlighten and give strength to public 
 opinion. 
 
 I must here point out to your reflection a change 
 that has taken place, and is daily operating in the 
 way of thinking of the people of England. This 
 change is not the less incontestable, for not having 
 been sufficiently appreciated by the political 
 writers of that country. 
 
 In the year 1688, it was not a movement of the 
 body of the people, but the knowledge and 
 interests of the aristocracy, that expelled the 
 
LETTER TI. 107 
 
 Stewarts, and changed the form of government. 
 The revolution being happily accomplished, the 
 great whig families naturally found themselves at 
 the head of affairs ; and the nation, grateful for 
 their having anticipated its wishes, and satisfied its 
 real wants before it was thoroughly acquainted 
 with them itself, for a long time required nothing 
 more of them, than to maintain themselves in 
 power. Certain names were the standards round 
 which public opinion rallied; and during the 
 greater part of the eighteehth century, domestic 
 politics turned more on persons than on prin- 
 ciples. Shall it be the whig aristocracy, or the 
 tory aristocracy, that shall fill the office of mini- 
 sters ? such seems to have been the whole subject 
 in debate. During this period, no doubt the 
 nation increased in greatness, and liberty made 
 some progress : but this progress appeared only 
 in the back ground, the front of the picture was 
 occupied by the interests of the aristocracy. 
 Certain memoirs of the last century, those of the 
 Earl of Waldegrave in particular, are very curious, 
 read in this view. If the names did not remind 
 the reader, that the scene was in England, he 
 
108 • LETTER VI. 
 
 would often be tempted to believe, that it was at 
 Madrid or Versailles, and that he was taking a peep 
 at the Cadran-Bleu, the interests of liberty and the 
 people are so completely lost in the intrigues of 
 the court and cabinet. 
 
 Many circumstances, in the foremost rank of 
 which must be placed the American war and the 
 French revolution, have contributed gradually to 
 change the character of the domestic politics of En- 
 gland. Men have begun to demand of an adminis- 
 tration, not merely to display these or those colours, 
 but to satisfy this or that want, to.conformto a given 
 order of opinions or interests. Measures have 
 acquired importance, in proportion as men have 
 lost it; and people now inquire, not so much who 
 are the ministers, as what the ministers do. 
 
 On the other hand, the sphere of parliamentary 
 discussion is enlarged: many objects of public or 
 private concern have passed from the hands of 
 ministers into those of parliament: many others, 
 and these are a majority, daily pass from the 
 domains of legislation to those of the personal or 
 collective activity of the people, and parliament 
 intervenes only to sanction the results of the spirit 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 109 
 
 of association. In proportion as the social order 
 is elevated by the progress of knowledge, the base 
 of the political edifice enlarges, the nation manages 
 its affairs itself, and public opinion becomes more 
 and more the real sovereign of the country. 
 Such is the natural progress of societies, when no 
 artificial obstacle fetters them in their course. 
 
 The power of opinion is a new phenomenon in 
 history, and forms the distinguishing character- 
 istic of the present period. Its influence is felt 
 not in free countries alone: despotic states can- 
 not emancipate themselves from its sway: they 
 league in vain to combat it, and are carried along 
 unconsciously by the atmosphere that surrounds 
 them. Soldiers innumerable obey their orders, 
 their newspapers are mute, their nobility is with- 
 out power, their people without liberty, no barrier 
 opposes them; yet they feel themselves restrained 
 by some unknown, invisible power. If they 
 commit an act of injustice, they feel obliged to 
 excuse it by sophistry. If they be guilty of any 
 folly, it seems as if all Europe in chorus chaunted 
 the song of king Midas, and public opinion sup- 
 plies with them the place of conscience and good 
 sense. 
 
110 LETTER VI. 
 
 No doubt, in the rising progress of England at 
 large, the aristocracy has not ceased to occupy 
 and deserve the first rank: but let us not deceive 
 ourselves, it no longer gives the impulse, it only 
 participates in the general movement of the 
 country. Let us not fall here into the common 
 error of ascribing the effects of many concomitant 
 causes to one alone, which for the most part has 
 had only an accessary influence on the result. 
 
 If we now turn our eyes toward France, we 
 shall be struck with one final and decisive con- 
 sideration. In the political system, as in the 
 moral, and in the physical world, it is the attri- 
 bute of God alone to create powers; we can only 
 observe their mode of action, and apply them to 
 our use. The skill as well as the duty of a states- 
 man consists in availing himself of all the elements, 
 with which he is furnished by society ; in studying 
 with care all the germes that are unfolding, in 
 order to employ them in the welfare and advance- 
 ment of the community: but to create moral 
 elements, with which neither the history nor the 
 manners of the country furnish him, is beyond his 
 power. 
 
 Now I am not afraid to assert, that the aristo- 
 
LETTER VI. Ill 
 
 cratic element does not exist in France; where it 
 is so feeble, and so little accordant with the whole 
 of our manners and ideas, that something of the 
 ridiculous and bombastic invincibly attaches to 
 our attempts to unfold it. Under Buonaparte 
 this might have been ascribed to the newness of 
 his dynasty: but why is it the same since the 
 restoration? It is because at no period of its his- 
 tory has France possessed a national aristocracy. 
 The nobles there, as soon as they ceased to be 
 feudal, became courtiers; and hence the idea of 
 hereditary prerogatives is inseparable in most 
 minds from that of unjust privileges or puerile 
 vanities. 
 
 The robes of the peers of England are ancient 
 togce of magistrates, the antiquity of which heigh- 
 tens their splendour, and the mere appearance of 
 which at once recalls to mind historical remem- 
 brances, that seduce the imagination, and consti- 
 tutional guaranties, that are grateful to the under- 
 standing. The dress of ceremony of our peers, 
 the uniforms of our courtiers, composed but yes- 
 terday with the learned assistance of the tailor and 
 milliner, are and will long remain nothing more 
 
112 LETTER VI. 
 
 than stage dresses. The more splendid the mate- 
 rial, the richer the embroidery, the more they do 
 honour to the exquisite taste of the inventors : but 
 as to their effect on the imagination, as to the 
 moral influence with which they are endued, of 
 these I think I may be allowed to doubt. 
 
 Wait, I shall be told : nothing can supply the 
 place of time: begin by establishing entailed 
 estates and the law of primogeniture, and let these 
 institutions take root. I will not assert, that the 
 efforts our statesmen may make with this view 
 will be stamped with complete impotence at the 
 outset; but at least we may be permitted to think, 
 that these efforts would be employed with more 
 utility in any other direction. With money, toil, 
 and patience, it is not absolutely impossible, to 
 make cedars of Lebanon grow in the plains of 
 Beauce, but every man of sense would prefer cul- 
 tivating corn there. To found the hope of liberty 
 on imperceptible germes of aristocracy, that 
 perhaps will never unfold themselves, would be 
 imitating the archbishop, who ordered hemp to be 
 sown, when he was told his servants wanted 
 shirts. 
 
LETTER VI. 113 
 
 We agreed at the commencement of this dis- 
 cussion, that any interference of the legislature in 
 the direction of capital and division of property 
 v^as generally fatal. We find at the conclusion, 
 that we have arrived at the same truth, and in this 
 respect I shall not dispute the inconveniences of 
 the French law, by which the will of the parent is 
 too strictly limited. It is impossible to decide 
 beforehand, that the division of property, or its 
 concentration, will be constantly the most advan- 
 tageous system for the community. The wants 
 of society vary as well as the interests of each 
 family, and the reason of the individual is the only 
 competent judge respecting them. Every useless 
 restraint imposed on it therefore seems to me 
 vexatious : and the law, that permits the father of 
 a family to do what he will with his property 
 during his life, to give it away, squander it, or lose 
 it at the gaming table; and prohibits the same 
 father from distributing his possessions among his 
 children, when he writes his will, with the thoughts 
 of death and sentiments of religion present to his 
 mind; is surely inconsistent. 
 
 Confining the question within these limits, 1 
 
 I 
 
114 LETTER VI. 
 
 readily agree with the English economists; I 
 willingly claim a greater latitude for the right of 
 bequeathing; but I take care to go no farther. I 
 do not cease to think, that, where the will of the 
 father is not declared, an equal division between 
 the children should remain the general law; and 
 if, even after the adoption of a new law, the man- 
 ners of the nation should continue to cherish this 
 equality of division, I should congratulate my 
 country on it. 
 
]15 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 Aristocracy and Democracy. 
 
 I SAID in my first letter, that it was scarcely 
 possible, to make any general assertion respecting 
 England, to which we might not easily oppose a 
 contrary assertion. This remark was not dictated 
 by the love of paradox, it is fundamental, and 
 merits some investigation. 
 
 England is the only country in Europe "where 
 all the elements of modern civilization have freely 
 developed themselves, the only one where they 
 have had full scope. While other nations have 
 been subjected to artificial forms; have received 
 the stamp of a foreign legislation, or been restrained 
 in their growth by regulations framed at pleasure 
 in the council of a king or the cabinet of a minister; 
 England alone has made itself what it is : alone 
 
 t2 
 
116 LETTER VII. 
 
 too, while enriching itself with the progressive 
 acquisitions of human reason, it has made no sacri- 
 fice of what it inherited from times past. Boldness 
 in enterprize, tenacity in preserving, have been the 
 characteristics of the nation, ever since the time 
 when the barons exclaimed with one accord: 
 Nolumus leges AnglKE mutari: and by these it is 
 still distinguished. Hence the peculiar attrac- 
 tiveness of the study and picture of England. It 
 is the land of contrasts: it is a tragedy of Shak- 
 speare, a novel of Walter Scott: every thing is 
 there combined, and every thing is full of life and 
 originality. 
 
 No doubt the various elements, found collected 
 there in such abundance, often require to be 
 reduced to more regular order; there are briars to 
 be extirpated, straight paths to be traced out: but 
 where vegetation is rich and vigorous, the labour 
 of the gardener is easy. Every day corrects some 
 abuse: publicity in the social world, like the sun 
 in the natural, corrects the faults of men, and fer- 
 tilizes their labours. From day to day we see 
 general order springing spontaneously from the 
 well-directed application of individual powers. 
 
LETTER VIT. 117 
 
 But this order is not the cold symmetry, to which 
 inert matter may be subjected ; it is the living 
 order of nature: a thousand different forces com- 
 bat or balance each other, and vary to our eyes 
 the spectacle of the universe, without disturbing 
 the harmonious beauty of the whole. 
 
 How different a picture does our political 
 organization display! On paper nothing can be 
 more methodical. The ground is well levelled, 
 the symmetry is admirable, the borders of a Dutch 
 garden are not more nicely squared by the line' 
 we may give an account of the whole by its limits 
 and abuttals. Is any thing to be regulated ? the 
 mayor addresses himself to the sub-prefect, he 
 to the prefect, the prefect to the minister, whose 
 decree on large paper, with abundance of figures 
 and tables, returns through the same channel to 
 the regulatees [administrts], a technical term by 
 which the French people is designated . Is a point 
 of law in question ? the hierarchy is equally well 
 regulated: we have three hundred and sixty tri- 
 bunals of the first instance, then twenty-six royal 
 courts, then a court of cassation. We have j udges, 
 then counsellors, then presidents, attorneys of the 
 
118 LETTER VII. 
 
 king, and attorneys general: each has his par- 
 ticular task, his uniform, and his allowance. 
 Nothing can be more easy to learn by heart. 
 This is not all: we have a charter of seventy-six 
 articles. The first article declares us all equal in 
 the eye of the law : the fourth says, that liberty is 
 secured to every man : the eighth asserts, that we 
 have a right to publish our opinions : according to 
 the thirteenth, ministers are responsible for their 
 conduct: the thirty-fifth gives us an elective 
 chamber: the sixty -fifth maintains the trial by 
 jury. Would you have further liberties? look 
 for any other article under its proper number. It 
 would be ungracious not to be satisfied with rights 
 so clearly registered. 
 
 Now should some inquisitive person step for- 
 ward and say : no doubt you have these highly 
 estimable institutions, and a beautiful scheme of 
 government. But if, amid your systematic 
 arrangement, public functionaries should erect 
 themselves into an oppressive aristocracy; if a 
 mayor should indulge himself in arbitrary con- 
 duct toward his administris, as you call them; if 
 this conduct be confirmed by the prefect, and 
 
LZTTilR VII. fif 
 
 sanctioned by superior authority; if the govern- 
 ment should render elections illusory by means of 
 force or intrigue; if a minister, ambitious for hini* 
 self, or for the party to which he is subservient, 
 should overturn even your fundamental insti- 
 tutions ; if freedom of speech in the chambers, or 
 the publicity of judicial debates, were attacked, 
 what means of resistance have you? Have you 
 any real securities? And if such securities do 
 exist, have you that activity, energy, and jealous 
 vigilance, by which alone acquired rights can be 
 preserved, and new ones gained ? 
 
 Alas ! what answer could we give ? Should we 
 not be obliged to confess, that, in our political 
 system, every thing wants life and reality ; and 
 that the methodical and uniform order, which 
 reigns on the surface of our institutions and man- 
 ners, conceals the greatest of social disorders 
 within, the total absence of the means of resistance, 
 and the still more pernicious absence of a senti- 
 ment of our rights and duties as citizens. 
 
 In the course of our correspondence I have had 
 many occasions of pointing out to you the various 
 
120 LETTER VI r. 
 
 contrasts, that England oifers; but I would not 
 now wander from the subject, to which we find 
 ourselves naturally brought by my last letters. 
 
 England is a country eminently aristocratic. 
 It is so by its institutions, opinions, and manners. 
 It is more so than any other country in Europe, 
 more than would seem possible from the general 
 progress of the age; finally, I will not hesitate to 
 say, more than its true interests and happiness 
 render desirable. This observation is parti- 
 cularly striking to us, who have all the habits of 
 democracy, liberty excepted; and who look on 
 superiority of rank in society with perfect 
 indifference, or with jealousy and spleen, accord- 
 ing to our situations or tempers. 
 
 In the unequal division of property, law of 
 primogeniture, entails, an hereditary peerage, 
 electioneering influence, distinction of ranks, 
 honorary prerogatives, privileged corporations, 
 every where we find the element of aristocracy. 
 But does it reign alone? Assuredly not. If it 
 may be said with truth, that aristocracy has 
 taken deeper root in England, than in any coun- 
 
LETTEU VII. 121 
 
 try on the Continent, we may affirm with equal 
 confidence, that democracy exists not so really 
 and actively in any other part of Europe. 
 
 1 do not even speak of popular elections, county 
 meetings, public meetings of every kind, where 
 the first persons in the state are obliged to attend, 
 and receive the praise or blame of the multitude. 
 But let us simply consider the popular organiza- 
 tion of England. Is there any thing on this 
 side the Atlantic more republican? Is there a 
 country in Europe, where the body of citizens at 
 large directs itself most of its affairs, ecclesiastical, 
 administrative, and financial ; M'here it appoints 
 officers of police, collectors of taxes, managers of 
 the poor, inspectors of highways ? Do not ima- 
 gine, that these are matters of empty form, in 
 which no interest is taken, or burdensome duties 
 executed with repugnance. No : they are rights 
 duly appreciated, and daily exercised by the 
 lowest citizens in England. Every parish is a 
 little democratic state. There are parishes in 
 London, and in other cities of England, where the 
 animated contests of parties and local interests 
 remind us of the Italian republics in the middle 
 
122 LETTER Vn, 
 
 ages. Like Florence, they have their fuorusdti, 
 who, driven from power by an opposite party, 
 after long struggles recover their preponderance, 
 and regain the confidence of their fellow citizens. 
 The election of a magistrate, the adoption of some 
 measure of local interest, sets men's minds in 
 motion, and raises their passions: they meet, 
 speak, write, plead, spare nothing to secure the 
 triumph of their opinion or their party. But 
 under the omnipotent hand of justice public order 
 has nothing to apprehend from this effervescence, 
 which diffuses life throughout the lowest ramifi- 
 cations of the social order. The word country is 
 not an empty abstract term: it presents to every 
 citizen not a vague idea or national halo, but a 
 living image of the sentiments and interests of his 
 whole life. 
 
 This combination of aristocracy and democracy, 
 which strikes us in the political institutions of 
 England, is not less remarkable in its manners 
 and customs. The regularity, with which the 
 degrees of precedence are fixed from the king to 
 the labourer, appears to us pedantic, and not 
 without reason. However, on closer considera- 
 
LETTER VII. 123 
 
 tion, we find it possesses the advantage of calm- 
 ing self-love, by introducing right even into the 
 empire of vanity. In countries where social dis- 
 tinctions are arbitrary, assigning a man priority of 
 place in a drawing-room, or the right or left hand 
 at table, is a personal decision : it is saying to him, 
 I have more respect for you than for your neigh- 
 bour. In England, it is merely the acknowledg- 
 ment of an established fact, A marquis of twenty 
 takes precedence of Mr. Pitt, the prime minister; 
 a mere fox-hunting baronet precedes Mr. Wilber- 
 force, without its entering into the head of any 
 one to be proud of it, or to take offence at a 
 custom established by law. 
 
 In this country, where all the elements of social 
 order both good and bad are found united in 
 greater abundance than any where else, the pride 
 of rank no doubt also finds its place. Not only 
 are constitutional prerogatives sought, but places 
 at court, coats of arms, mottoes, all the old para- 
 phernalia of the feudal system are retained with 
 a degree of importance sometimes ridiculous. 
 We meet with families, which, proud of their 
 antiquity and alliances, would not exchange the 
 
124 LETTER VI I. 
 
 rank of a simple gentleman, or commoner, for an 
 hereditary title, and would almost think it a 
 derogation to accept a peerage. There is even a 
 county, that of Cheshire, where the native gentle- 
 men conceive themselves entitled to treat as up- 
 starts even lords, if their descent cannot be traced 
 as far back as their own. But these trifling ano- 
 malies, these local prejudices, or this family pride, 
 little engage the attention of the public, whose 
 views and ambition are especially directed toward 
 the honorary distinctions, that are intimately con- 
 nected with useful functions or constitutional 
 sureties; and the spots of family or local vanity 
 are lost in the splendour of the dignity, that at- 
 taches to the man or the citizen. 
 
 I will go farther, without fear of being con- 
 tradicted by any one acquainted with the way 
 of thinking in England. Along with this decided 
 propensity for the distinctions of rank, there is in 
 some points a greater freedom from aristocratical 
 prejudices, a more just and simple manner of 
 considering different conditions in society, than 
 even in our country of France, winnowed as it 
 has been by the revolution. If a mechanic acquire 
 an independant fortune by his industry, settle on 
 
LETTER VII. 125 
 
 an estate purchased by the money he has saved, 
 live ill a respectable manner, and display some 
 degree of zeal and knowledge in public affairs, he 
 will soon find himself considered as a gentleman, 
 be placed in the list of justices of the peace, join 
 persons of the highest consideration in his county 
 at the quarter sessions, become acquainted with 
 them, be invited to their tables, and treated with 
 a simple civility not rendered humiliating by any 
 appearance of condescension. Of this I know 
 many instances. 
 
 But, you will say, the persons of whom you 
 speak have quitted their occupations: would it 
 be the same, if they continued to follow them ? 
 would they then encounter no repulse from pre- 
 judices? does no prejudice prevent the son of an 
 ancient gentleman's family from embracing a lu- 
 crative employment? I say no, without hesitation; 
 and I can prove it by more than one fact. The 
 younger sons of peers daily engage in trade, 
 without any idea of derogation entering into their 
 minds. The brother of a man, who would have 
 been distinguished by birth, had he not been a 
 thousand times more so by his talents, has be- 
 
126 JLETTER VU. 
 
 come a wine merchant, without his family, his 
 friends, or the public, finding in it any thing 
 strange. 
 
 A foreign prince was present some years ago in 
 the gallery of the House of Commons. He heard 
 an opposition member treat ministers with a 
 spirited freedom, that astonished and confounded 
 one habituated to the constraint of a foreisfQ 
 court. " Who is that speaker?" said he to his 
 neighbour.—" Mr. Whitbread." — " Whitbread, 
 the brewer?" — '* Yes, certainly." — '' What! a 
 brewer speak thus to the minister of foreign 
 affairs!" — " Why not?" — " And is this brewer 
 received in the great world? whom did he 
 marry?' — *' The sister of Lord Grey; a woman 
 descended from the blood-royal of England." — 
 "Is it possible?" — " Very possible, my lord; 
 and even so natural, that you are the only person 
 present, who would be surprised at it." This 
 conversation was related to me by one who wit- 
 nessed it. 
 
 You will tell me, that Mr. Whitbread was not 
 like the generality of brewers: that his large 
 fortune, his talents, his character, gave him a 
 
LETTER VII. 127 
 
 distinct rank. Undoubtedly they did: who thinks 
 of disputing it? I do not say, that a man's being 
 a brewer is sufficient, to enable him to marry 
 into a family surrounded with all the splendour 
 of birth, virtue, and talents. Such notions are 
 the rude dreams of demagogical intoxication. 
 What is of importance to a well-ordered society 
 is, that every kind of exaltation is accessible to 
 all honourable efforts ; that every advantage rank, 
 wealth, or talents can confer, is certain of being 
 estimated at its proper value, without any one 
 excluding or being detrimental to another : if the 
 imagination bear sway in regard to ancient re- 
 membrances, that of reason does also in the 
 respect paid to personal merit. 
 
 In our correspondence, I avoid as much as 
 possible the introduction of names. The English 
 have as much or perhaps more repugnance to 
 praise in print than to criticism : and though this 
 sentiment is not free from pride, the kindness, 
 with which I have long been honoured in England, 
 the familiar acquaintances I have formed there, 
 make it my duty to respect it. However, as 
 
128 LETTER VII. 
 
 I have mentioned Mr. Whitbread, a few words 
 concerning his son will serve to give you a just 
 idea of the real state of men's minds on the 
 subject before us. 
 
 Mr. Charles Whitbread, at present member for 
 the county of Middlesex, inherits the fortune and 
 reputation enjoyed by his father. Educated at 
 Cambridge, he claimed and obtained the college 
 honours without examination, as a descendant of 
 the blood-royal by the mother's side. Do you 
 imagine he was proud of this somewhat whimsical 
 privilege ? By no means : he possesses as much 
 modesty and simplicity as any man living. His 
 only view was to establish a right founded on 
 custom. Possessing immense property, con- 
 nected by marriage and habits of intimacy with 
 the first families in the kingdom, do you imagine 
 he thinks of quitting the brewery, that made the 
 fortune of his father? or that it hurts his pride to 
 see his name on the signs of half the public-houses 
 in London and the south of England ? certainly 
 not; and I shall not do him the injustice to con- 
 ceive, that he can hesitate between the pleasures 
 
LETTKR VI r. 129 
 
 of idle vanity, and the influence he enjoys through 
 his various relations with men of all classes in 
 society. 
 
 In France, we have often seen want of fortune 
 lead to marriages very unequal in regard to rank. 
 But when the heiress of an ancient name espoused, 
 a rich man of yesterday, or when a great lord 
 married into the family of a financier, by how 
 many insolent phrases, or at least contemptuous 
 civilities, were these reminded, that the state of 
 their fortunes alone had led to the union ! A jest 
 so coarse that I am almost ashamed to repeat it, 
 " to dung their ground," had formerly become 
 almost a general term to express marriages, by 
 which birth sought to obtain the pleasures of 
 luxury, and offered those of vanity in exchange. 
 And even now that equality has introduced itself 
 into our manners, as well as into our laws, it is 
 seldom that noble families, when allied by mar- 
 riage with rich persons of low birth, deny them- 
 selves the pleasure of insinuating, that, if the 
 revolution had not overturned every thing, they 
 should never have stooped to such matches. 
 
 K 
 
130 LETTER VII. 
 
 In England no doubt persons eagerly seek 
 alliances, {connections as they express it,) that will 
 heighten their consideration, or increase their 
 political influence or reputation. Great value is 
 attached to ancient descent, and aristocratical 
 traditions : but the different classes of society, 
 though more distinct in appearance, are really 
 united by more intimate ties, and form a whole 
 much more compact. 
 
 If the son of a common shopkeeper, or even of 
 a mechanic, distinguish himself in the public 
 schools, and display superior talents at the bar, 
 he may rise without obstacle to the rank of lord 
 chancellor; enter the house of peers with an 
 hereditary title, the splendour of which will be 
 transmitted to his children ; and serve as a beacon 
 to all, who, born in a low condition like himself, 
 feel themselves animated by a generous ambition. 
 One of his sisters may marry a descendant of the 
 Howards or the Percies, and become related to all 
 the great nobility celebrated in the history of Eng- 
 land. Another, married at an earlier age, may 
 be the wife of one of her own class, and remain in 
 
hEITER VII. 131 
 
 it. One of his brotliers may have followed the 
 profession of arms, and obtained a peerage by his 
 bravery, as he has done by his learning and 
 talents. Another, less fortunate, may continue 
 in the shop of his father, or in the office of an 
 attorney: without this great difference between 
 the members of the same family exciting astonish- 
 ment in any one. I am not here making gra- 
 tuitous suppositions: whoever has a little studied 
 the domestic constitution of England, knows as 
 well as I, that similar combinations have existed, 
 and may exist again. 
 
 The taste of the English for titles and aristo- 
 cratic distinctions is carried to a foolish excess. 
 You will see them rush in crowds to stare at 
 a foreign prince, whose fortune and political 
 importance are inferior to those of the least 
 member of the house of commons. In the re- 
 spect shown by the common people to the higher 
 classes, there is something so eager and submis- 
 sive, that at first view it might appear servile: 
 but on a closer inspection you will soon find, 
 that their respect to rank is always united with a 
 very just and even pice appreciation of the real 
 
 K 2 
 
132 LETTER VII. 
 
 merit of the person on one hand, and with a pro- 
 found sentiment of their own rights as citizens of 
 a free country on the other. 
 
 Far from familiarity or rudeness toward supe- 
 riors being a proof of independance or dignity of 
 character, nothing better assimilates with a servile 
 complaisance toward power, and submissive in- 
 sensibility to injustice. The Andalusian muleteer 
 smokes his segar wdth a grandee of Spain : is it 
 because philosophy or liberty has rendered them 
 equal ? Certainly not : ignorance and despotism 
 have produced in the one rudeness of manners, in 
 the other ignoble sentiments and habits. 
 
 The first condition for obtaining respect in 
 England, in any class, is to be what is called a 
 gentleman ; an expression that has no correspond- 
 ing term in French, and a perfect knowledge of 
 which implies in itself alone a pretty long fami- 
 liarity with English manners. The term gentil- 
 homme with us is applied exclusively to birth, 
 that of homme comme ilfaut to manners and station 
 in society, those of galant homme and homme de 
 merite to conduct and character. A gentleman is 
 one, who, with some advantages of birth, fortune. 
 
LETTER VII. 133 
 
 talent, or situation, unites moral qualities suitable 
 to the place he occupies in society, and manners 
 indicating a liberal education and habits. The 
 people of England have a remarkably nice feeling 
 in this respect, and even the splendour of the 
 highest rank will seldom mislead them. If a man 
 of the highest birth depart in his conduct or 
 merely in his manners from what his situation 
 requires of him, you will soon hear it said, even 
 by persons of the lowest class, " Though a lord, 
 he is not a gentleman." 
 
 If this great lord be guilty of the least injustice; 
 if he behave improperly in certain respects toward 
 the man, who just now accosted him with the 
 most submissive humility ; you will immediately 
 see a proud rudeness succeed to that respect 
 which was accorded to rank, but is refused to 
 arrogance. The sentiment of right is so strongly 
 imprinted on English minds, that every human 
 consideration vanishes, as soon as this vital prin- 
 ciple of social dignity and liberty has to fear 
 the slightest infringement : and, in a country 
 so monarchical, even the splendour of royalty 
 is insufficient to cover the least infraction of 
 
134 LETTER VI r. 
 
 what all the citizens consider as their common 
 patrimony. 
 
 George III. once ordered a gate E^nd road 
 through his park at Richmond, which had 
 been open for years to foot passengers, to be 
 blocked up.* A tradesman of Richmond, who 
 found this path convenient to himself and the 
 other inhabitants of the village, took up the cause 
 for his neighbours: he maintained, that, if the 
 path were originally a trespass, it had become a 
 public way by lapse of time; that the right of 
 prescription was acquired ; and he would compel 
 the park-gate to be opened. He did not hesitate 
 to bring an action in a court of law, and obtained 
 a verdict in his favour. If any governor of the 
 Louvre or the Tuileries should take a fancy to 
 close against the public the walks and passages 
 they have enjoyed from time immemorial, should 
 we find many citizens in Paris, who would bring 
 
 * It was not George III. but the princess Amelia, daughter 
 of George II. and ranger of Richmond park, who blocked up 
 the gate. This however does not affect the argument. The 
 plaintiff was a brewer, of the name of Lewis. Tr. 
 
LETTER VII. 13o 
 
 Ihe case into a court? or many judges, who 
 would give a decree in their favour ? 
 
 In London, I have seen the carriage of a prince 
 of the blood seized by his creditors, at the moment 
 he was entering it to go to court. Do you ima- 
 gine the persons of whom I speak were stern 
 republicans, enemies to royalty or to the aristo- 
 cracy? Not in the least: they were very obedient 
 subjects, men as susceptible as others of an incli- 
 nation and respect for the privileges of rank: but 
 at the same time they were English citizens, who 
 knew their rights, and chose to avail themselves 
 of them. 
 
 I have sought in vain in England, in all the 
 classes I have had any opportunity of observing, 
 for a sentiment too common among us, that 
 passion for equality, which degenerates into a 
 jealous antipathy to all kinds of superiority in 
 society; an antipathy, the objects of which are 
 not always confined to the fortuitous advantages 
 of birth or fortune, but sometimes even the 
 natural prerogatives of talent. If a sentiment of 
 this kind exist any where in England, it will be 
 at most among a few authors or periodical writers 
 
136 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 
 of the second class. But even in this class it is 
 very rare, that polemical violence leads to envy of 
 the inequality of stations in society, or the odious 
 pas ion of levelling. 
 
 I speak not here of the radicals, because we 
 shall have occasion to notice them hereafter: 
 I will say however by the by, that, though the 
 strict consequence of their principles would be a 
 complete confounding of rank and property, the 
 majority of them are at present not the less 
 sincere in believing, that their desires are con- 
 fined to a simple political reform. 
 
 This freedom from jealousy of the higher classes 
 is the more remarkable, as the disparity of for- 
 tunes and conditions is carried to a very high 
 point. I know an English gentleman, whose 
 mansion is surrounded by more than ten thousand 
 acres of land, devoted entirely to the pleasures of 
 the chace, or taking the air; and another who 
 might cut down wood to the amount of more than 
 a million of livres (40,000 guineas), without ren- 
 dering his groves less picturesque. For many 
 miles round there is not a family independant of 
 them, not a house the property of the person who 
 
LETTER VII. 
 
 137 
 
 lives in it, not a garden that is not a temporary 
 grant to him M^ho cultivates it. Yet in such an 
 artificial state of society no one repines, no one 
 entertains a wish to pull down the colossus, and to 
 share his spoils. Tliat such should be the case in 
 Russia, where the lord appears to his slaves as a 
 sort of demigod on earth, is easily conceived: 
 but this tranquil respect to such exorbitant 
 superiority, combined with an energetic sense of 
 liberty, and an active desire in men to better 
 their condition, is the miracle of the social order. 
 
 Equality however is making progress in Eng- 
 land, as in the rest of the world. Thank Heaven 
 it is the natural tendency of the age ; a tendency, 
 by which those, who vainly pretend to combat it, 
 are unconsciously carried away. But England 
 has this vast advantage, it is by the elevation of the 
 lower ranks, not by the depression of the higher, 
 that the inequalities are diminished. The people 
 do not dispute either the prerogatives or the 
 wealth of the aristocracy: they are too proud to 
 claim any thing but a free career, certain that 
 talents and energy will open a way for them to 
 honours which are accessible to all. 
 
 That an equilibrium is desirable between the 
 
138 LETTER VI r. 
 
 different elements of the social order, as between 
 the different faculties of man, cannot be disputed. 
 I deem it equally incontestible, that the aristo- 
 cratic principle has too great preponderance in 
 England; and that the natural progress of the 
 human race toward equality is not there suffi- 
 ciently rapid: but the skill of the legislator, like 
 that of the physician, consists in restoring the 
 equilibrium by strengthening the weaker organs, 
 without stifling the stronger; and this, at least 
 in my opinion, we shall see accomplished in 
 England. The diffusion of knowledge throughout 
 all classes, the unheard of progress of industry 
 and talent, tend to increase the action of the 
 democratic principle with much more force, than 
 the policy of a minister, or the intrigues of a 
 party, can tend to fortify the opposite principle. 
 But this development proceeds without convul- 
 sions. From day to day the labouring classes 
 approach the middle classes, and these the higher 
 ranks of society, without the aristocracy having 
 to complain of being stripped of any of the advan- 
 tages, that the traditions of times past have 
 bequeathed it. 
 
139 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 Means of Publicity — Newspapers. 
 
 Of all the means of publicity, no one contributes 
 more than the newspapers to that general diffusion 
 of a moderate degree of knowledge, which T men- 
 tioned in one of my early letters as the distin- 
 guishing characteristic of England. 
 
 In every country the periodical press is one of the 
 most important results of modern civilization: but 
 no where is it so essential an element of the social 
 organization as with the English, and with the 
 Americans, whose manners are perfectly similar to 
 those of the English in this respect. Elsewhere 
 newspapers are a powerful weapon, of which 
 governments and parties avail themselves by turns: 
 in England and in the United States they are the 
 
140 LETTER VIII. 
 
 agent, the indispensable medium of all the con- 
 nexions men have with each other. There are few 
 villages in England, where the reading of a news- 
 paper is not become a primary want: and in 
 America, I am told, we even see servants making 
 it one of the stipulations of their engagement. 
 
 The circle of readers is incomparably more 
 extensive in England than with us. They reckon 
 about a thousand circulating libraries, and more 
 than three hundred book clubs; an ingenious 
 institution, which I think might be introduced 
 into France with advantage. A certain number of 
 persons join to purchase books in common, the 
 price of which would exceed the means of each 
 individual. The books circulate among the 
 members of the society, and at the end of the year 
 are sold or divided. Thus, if such a club consist 
 of twenty members, each has the use of a number 
 of books, equal in value to twenty times his sub- 
 scription money. 
 
 On the other hand, philanthropic and religious 
 societies have so multiplied elementary and pious 
 books, that, in spite of the high price of every 
 
LLTTER VIII. 141 
 
 thing in England, such works are no where sold 
 cheaper, and brought within the reach of a greater 
 number of readers. 
 
 Political newspapers have quadrupled in Eng- 
 land within the last forty years. In 1782 their 
 number was seventy-nine ; and in 1 82 1 , according 
 to a report made to the house of commons, they 
 were two hundred and eighty-four. None of these 
 papers, except the Observer, which is published 
 only once a week, have so many subscribers as 
 the Constitutionnel, or the Journal des Debates, 
 which are sold at a much lower price. Even the 
 Times, the most considerable of the English daily 
 papers,* does not print above eight or ten thousand, 
 but every paper passes through the hands of a 
 greater number of readers. 
 
 The style of the papers sometimes savours of 
 this. Having to gratify the taste of the very great 
 number of readers they reckon upon in the lower 
 classes of society, they are obliged to have 
 recourse to phrases, the energetic familiarity of 
 
 * The Times, I am informed, has paid for stamps, the sum of 
 forty six thousand pounds sterling, in a year. 
 
142 LETTER VIII. 
 
 which occasionally degenerates into coarseness. 
 "When I took up the North Briton,'' says the 
 celebrated Wilkes, '* this paper was written by 
 two persons, Churchill and Lloyd, one a wit, the 
 other a poet. I soon saw, that it could not go on 
 thus. I laid aside their fine writing, and began 
 to cry as loud as I could bawl: ' the Scotch! the 
 Scotch! the Scotch!' Thus I turned out lord 
 Bute." In fact, the great strength of the news- 
 papers consists in the frequent repetition of simple 
 images, and arguments level to all capacities. 
 
 This strength is immense in England: the power 
 of the journalists increases there daily, and becomes 
 so much the more formidable, because the writers 
 of this class are generally discontented with their 
 station in society. In fact the respect paid them 
 bears no proportion to the actual power they 
 exercise, either from their talents, or from the 
 tremendous weapon they wield: a power, which 
 the spirit of making common cause with our 
 fellows has doubled of late, for, though opposed to 
 another as members of a party, they are united as 
 journalists; and the moment one of them is 
 attacked in this capacity, all his colleagues, what- 
 
LETTER VIII. 143 
 
 ever their opinions may be, form an impenetrable 
 phalanx around him. In America the power of 
 the newspapers is still more formidable; and the 
 dread they inspire sometimes deters men from 
 entering into the career of public life, who, though 
 zealous in the cause of liberty, are afraid of the 
 torrent of invective, that the opposite party would 
 pour on them or on their relations. 
 
 The spirit of the French is perhaps better 
 adapted than any other to newspaper writing, a 
 species of literature, that requires most particularly 
 quickness of perception, lively repartee, clear and 
 rapid recapitulation. Transient as have been the 
 moments of liberty enjoyed by our journalists, 
 and vicious as our present legislation is, very 
 remarkable talents have already been displayed 
 by this class of writers. I seldom open one of our 
 periodical papers, without being struck with the 
 elegance of style and sagacity of reasoning, that 
 are observable in a great number of articles; and 
 I have seen this opinion shared by Englishmen, 
 who, little acquainted with the progress France 
 has made in this career, could not avoid showing 
 some surprise, slightly tinctured with disdain. 
 
144 LETTER VHI. 
 
 But we are, nevertheless, pursuing a false sys- 
 tem in respect to newspapers. We have intro- 
 duced the division of labour, where it is not 
 merely useless but injurious. We separate poli- 
 tical and literary journals from commercial, 
 legal, and magisterial news, and from periodical 
 collections relative to jurisprudence. But as 
 few persons are able to subscribe for these dif- 
 ferent publications, though they all more or less 
 directly concern the citizens at large, it follows, 
 that readers of each class remain ignorant of the 
 subjects, that are not within the immediate sphere 
 of their business or tastes, and the publicity of 
 each is only partial. The country manufacturer 
 has no knowledge of any improvements made at 
 Paris, or in other parts of France, or it reaches 
 him very tardily. The monied man in the metro- 
 polis is ignorant of the ways in M'hich his capital 
 might be advantageously employed in the country. 
 The decrees of our twenty-six royal courts are 
 secrets to all but those who frequent them ; while 
 a more extensive publicity would, perhaps, pre- 
 vent a decree in opposition to one preceding it, 
 or a decision contrary to common sense ; or would 
 
LETTER VIII. 145 
 
 prevent a counsellor from undertaking a cause, 
 for which he would afterward have to blush at 
 the bar of public opinion. 
 
 The daily papers, the first object of which 
 at present is to gratify the passions of their 
 party, or amuse the idle, would acquire a more 
 solid and useful character, when they became 
 the depositaries of such a number of facts, 
 and would be obliged to be cautious of asser- 
 tions, to which these very facts would give 
 the lie. 
 
 An English newspaper is a kind of micro- 
 cosm, in which all the circumstances that in- 
 terest the community are displayed. We there 
 see daily the debates in Parliament, the plead- 
 ings of counsellors, and decisions of the courts, 
 faithfully reported; not merely, as with us, in 
 a few cases that may excite curiosity, or serve 
 the views of a party, but in all causes, civil and 
 criminal. The charges of judges, and simple af- 
 fairs of police, have the same publicity. Strongly 
 as differences of opinion are pronounced in this 
 country, violently as polemics are exercised, 
 
14() LETTER VIII. 
 
 respect to facts is carried too far, for a journalist 
 to venture to falsify them. Never, or scarcely 
 ever, does the same debate in Parliament, or the 
 same cause in a court of justice, exhibit an aspect 
 wholly different, when read in papers written by 
 opposite parties. The first thought of the anta- 
 gonists is to settle the lists with fidelity. 
 
 Speeches at county meetings, and at assemblies 
 of the people of every kind, whether religious, 
 philanthropic, political, or commercial ; those of 
 the East India Company, of the Common Council 
 of London, and of other corporate bodies of any 
 consequence, are published in the newspapers. 
 By these, the government makes known the con- 
 ditions of its contracts ; the candidate for a seat 
 in Parliament solicits the votes of electors, and 
 thanks his supporters for their exertions ; com- 
 petitors of all kinds exhibit their claims, and 
 solicit suffrages. The births, marriages, and 
 deaths, of persons of any importance, their 
 arrivals and departures, the company assembled 
 at their houses, the least circumstances of their 
 lives, are all known, all appear in print. The 
 
LETTER VIII. 147 
 
 whole of Great Britain appears to be the house 
 of glass of the ancient philosopher. 
 
 Hence arise a boldness, a frankness, in all the 
 reports, that Bxe unknown on the Continent. The 
 mind requires publicity, as the body does exer- 
 cise in the open air ; and every one is so accus- 
 tomed to this system, that even men who are the 
 most susceptible on the point of honour never 
 think of taking offence at the jokes, of which an 
 action or speech may be the subject in a news- 
 paper. In this respect there is the same difference 
 between the citizens of a free country, and those 
 who have contracted the narrow habits imposed 
 by despotism, as between the athlete:^, inured to 
 the exercises of the Gymnasium, and those men 
 brought up in the shade, a-xiof^otpoi, of whom Greece 
 in the days of its glory, spoke with so much 
 contempt. 
 
 Perhaps we must except from this observation 
 the leaders of the mode and of aristocratic futi- 
 lities. Drawing-rooms resemble each other all 
 the world over; and of all the passions vanity 
 is the most uniform. People of this description 
 are much divided in their opinions on the liberty 
 
 l2 
 
148 LETTER Vlll. 
 
 of the press. If, on the one hand, they are flat* 
 tered by the curiosity that appears to follow all 
 their movements ; by the daily publication of the 
 names and titles of the persons who dine with 
 them, of the dresses of their wives and daughters 
 at a ball or a levee, of the number of the game 
 they have killed, and I know not how many such 
 trifles ; on the other hand, their delicate sus- 
 ceptibility dreads the rude touch of the news- 
 papers. It is even probable, that in the conflict 
 between these two points of vanity the liberty of 
 the press would be worsted, if the habits of the 
 citizen did not happily get the better of the 
 weaknesses of the man of the world. 
 
 As to the aristocracy of the court, considered 
 as a political party, a great change has taken 
 place within these few years in its system, if not 
 in its sentiments. Formerly it was a decided 
 enemy to the liberty of the press : now it finds it 
 more advantageous, to turn it to its own pur- 
 poses, and to let loose hired journalists against 
 the friends of liberty, while at the same time it 
 harrasses with prosecutions writers of opinions 
 opposed to its own. The English aristocracy is 
 
LETTER Vril. 149 
 
 not alone in having made this fine discovery ; and 
 in this respect other countries are completely on 
 a level with Great Britain. 
 
 To our honour, however, it may be said, that 
 we have nothing comparable in violence and 
 baseness to such a paper as John Bull ; and it is 
 a phenomenon inexplicable to me, that public 
 opinion has not long ago done exemplary justice 
 on the infamous calumnies, which this journal 
 vomits at pleasure against the best men in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The liberty of the press has recently escaped 
 one of the greatest perils, with which it was ever 
 threatened. A society was formed in London, 
 under the unworthily usurped title of the Consti- 
 tutional Association f to prosecute at the joint 
 expence of the subscribers every work, which it 
 might think proper to term a libel against religion 
 or the state. You will easily conceive the danger 
 of such an institution : its members being freed 
 from the restraint of public opinion by not 
 appearing under their own names, it would 
 prosecute .without fear writings, that the crown 
 lawyers would be ashamed to attack openly ; and 
 
150 tETTER Vril. 
 
 thus sap the foundations of the liberty enjoyed 
 by newspapers, of which public shame is one of 
 the greatest securities. But liberty is like those 
 vivacious plants, the powerful vegetation of which 
 stifles the weeds, that seem as if they would stop 
 their growth. The Constitutional Association could 
 not stand against the rectitude of the moral sense 
 of the English; a jury did it justice; it has 
 fallen into contempt, and will soon be forgotten. 
 
151 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Newspapers. — The preceding subject continued. 
 
 I WAS astonished, as well as you, in one of my 
 former letters, that some of our politicians were 
 capable of conceiving an idea of prohibiting the 
 press from mentioning any circumstance in pri- 
 vate life, and not allowing a writer accused to 
 prove the truth of the facts related by him. 
 Nothing better displays the faultiness of such an 
 idea, than the state of the English law in this 
 respect, and the habits that have arisen from it. 
 
 The law of defamation is so vague, and at the 
 same time so severe, in England, that Bentham 
 pleasantly defines a libel to be — ** Any thing, 
 which any body, for any reason, dislikes." 
 
 Nothing so far can satisfy those, whose system 
 I am obliged to combat. The English law goes 
 
152 LETTER IX. 
 
 even beyond their wishes: it divines in some 
 measure their most secret thoughts. 
 
 This is not all : it offers him, who thinks him- 
 self injured, two modes of obtaining reparation. 
 He may bring an action of damages, or institute 
 a criminal prosecution. In the latter case, as the 
 crime consists, in the eyes of the law, not in 
 having defamed an individual, but in having dis- 
 turbed the public peace ; and as the peace may 
 be disturbed by a well-founded allegation, as 
 readily as by a calumny, the writer accused is 
 not allowed to prove the truth of the facts.* 
 
 On the contrary, in the case of a civil action, 
 which resolves itself into damages, the plaintiff 
 must prove, that he has suffered injury in his 
 person or reputation ; and hence the defendant 
 has a right to plead the truth of the facts he has 
 alleged. This is termed pleading 2i justification. 
 In this case the defendant gains a verdict, if he 
 can establish the truth of the facts, which he may 
 
 • Some judges have gone so far as to assert, that [truth 
 enhances the criminality of a libel, as it is more likely than 
 falsehood to occasion a breach of the peace. Tr. 
 
LETTER IX. 153 
 
 adduce witnesses to prove : and here we have 
 the application of this maxim of the English law, 
 that the plaintiff must come into court with clean 
 handSy must be rectus in curia, according to the 
 legal phrase. 
 
 Every one is at liberty to choose between these 
 two modes of obtaining justice. It would seem 
 natural, then, to suppose, that in all cases, but 
 particularly when the defamation turns on cir- 
 cumstances in private life, preference would be 
 given to a criminal prosecution, which does not 
 expose the plaintiff to the vexation of finding his 
 conduct sifted, commented upon, and often even 
 held up to public derision, by the counsel of the 
 defendant. 
 
 By no means : recourse is commonly had to a 
 civil action; and the reason is very simple. The 
 mere fact of preferring that species of process, in 
 which all proof of the truth of the facts is pro- 
 hibited, would produce in the minds of the jury 
 and of the public a prejudice unfavourable to the 
 plaintiff. Every one will say, the assertion must 
 be well-founded, since he will not consent to its 
 discussion : and the plaintiff, even if he gain his 
 
154 LETTER IX. 
 
 cause, will find his reputation more injured by 
 the trial, than by the defamation itself.* 
 
 I am far from thinking, that the truth of the 
 facts alone is sufficient, to entitle him who proves 
 it, to a verdict. This is allowing a privilege to 
 defamation founded on actual circumstances; a 
 defamation sometimes more dangerous and im- 
 moral than calumny itself. But the greater the 
 weight of this remark, the more extraordinary is 
 the preference given to a civil action over a cri- 
 minal prosecution. 
 
 I dwell on this practical answer to the errone- 
 ous system I am pointing out to you : a system, 
 which, in pretending to free the body of citizens 
 at large from the control of public opinion, to 
 
 * In cases of importance, either from the nature of the libel, 
 or more particularly from the rank in society of him who is the 
 subject of it, it sometimes occurs, that application is made to 
 the Court of King's Bench for a criminal prosecution by way 
 of information. The plaintiff must then begin by making affi- 
 davit of the falsehood of the facts alleged against him. But, 
 on the other hand, the defendant is allowed to confirm them : 
 and, in general, tjie court grants the information, without any 
 nice examination of the contradictory assertions, unless, indeed, 
 the truth of the facts appears to it incontrovertible. 
 
LETTER IX. 155 
 
 which persons m office alone should be amenable, 
 would encourage among us that timidity of mind 
 and manners, which offers an obstacle to the 
 establishment of liberty much more dangerous 
 than the malevolence or ignorance of the posses- 
 sors of authority. 
 
 It is to be observed also, that this distinction 
 between public and private life, so strongly 
 marked where those, who occupy no place at 
 the appointment of government, are disinherited 
 of all rights, or at least destitute of all political 
 occupation, loses itself by imperceptible degrees 
 in the happy countries, where every citizen 
 is connected in a thousand ways with the ad- 
 ministration of the affairs of the community. We 
 may even say, that there is no Englishman, who 
 may not consider himself as a public character. 
 No kind of life, from the gravest to the most 
 frivolous, from the most recluse to the most 
 public, can abstract itself from the empire of 
 opinion and the piercing eye of the journalist. 
 Does a landholder retire into the country, and 
 live in the bosom of ins family; unconnected as 
 he may choose to remain with general politics, he 
 
156 T^ETTJiri IX. 
 
 cannot refuse to participate in the affairs of his^ 
 county or his parish; he will be a- member of 
 some agricultural or other association; he will 
 take a part in some philanthropic meeting: hence 
 his neighbours, his colleagues, will have a right 
 to judge of his conduct, and this judgment will 
 pass into the newspapers. Is he a man of fashion, 
 running after frivolous pleasures alone: he will 
 be the steward of some ball, the arbitrator in a 
 wager, the umpire of a race course : this is suffi- 
 cient to place him at the bar of the public, by 
 which these diversions have been witnessed ; he 
 cannot escape from the omnipresence of the press ; 
 and if the vanity of the man of the world may 
 sometimes be hurt by it, the conscience of the 
 citizen is purified and strengthened. 
 
 The publication of a newspaper in England is an 
 undertaking that requires a large capital, and a 
 degree of activity, of which scarcely any other 
 kind of speculation can give an idea. The promp- 
 titude, with which an account of the meetings of 
 public bodies is printed, confounds the imagi- 
 nation. A speech of Brougham, Macintosh, or 
 Canning, scarcely delivered at six o'clock in the 
 
LETTER IX. 157 
 
 afternoon, will be read by all London before ten 
 at night ; and we may almost literally say, that a 
 member of parliament addresses himself to the 
 whole nation. 
 
 It has often happened, that I have been in the 
 house of commons till two or three in the morning, 
 and on rising to breakfast have received a full and 
 faithful account of the debate, that had lastedmore 
 than eight hours. I have witnessed a fact even still 
 more extraordinary . I was present a whole morn- 
 ing at a county meeting, forty miles from London ; 
 came post to town ; and on my return found an ac- 
 count of the meeting, and a summary of the speeches 
 I had heard, already published in an evening- 
 paper. Short-hand writers standing in the open air, 
 pressed on all sides by a tumultuous crowd, had 
 taken notes with a pencil on loose papers, with 
 which messengers ready to receive them hastened 
 to London, as page after page was filled. 
 
 The editors of newspapers spare neither trouble 
 nor expense, to procure information with all the 
 speed possible. If any unforeseen event occur 
 after the distribution of a paper, a second, a third, 
 and even a fourth or fifth edition is printed, which 
 
158 'letter IX. 
 
 hawkers, furnished with large tin horns, hasten to 
 cry throughout all the streets of the capital.* 
 The application of the steam-engine to printing 
 presses enables papers to be worked off with a 
 rapidity, of which our best workmen fall very 
 short, and the extraordinary promptitude of con- 
 veyance still farther increases the powerful action 
 of newspapers. Thirty hours after the close of a 
 debate in parliament, an account of it is published 
 in the city of York, two hmidred miles from Lon- 
 don. At the time of the celebrated trial of Hunt, 
 at Manchester, a summary of the proceedings in 
 the court appeared in the London papers, even 
 before the letters by post from Manchester were 
 distributed. The Times alone had three expresses 
 on the road. 
 
 The extreme rapidity of all the movements of 
 the social machine is one of the most prominent fea- 
 tures of England, and of those that strike foreigners 
 with astonishment, whether they contemplate it 
 in the material or the political world. Horses 
 cleave the air; orders are executed in an instant; 
 
 * This practice is now prohibited by act of parliament, on the 
 plea of its being a nuisance. Tr. 
 
LETTER IX. 159 
 
 business of the greatest consequence is transacted 
 ill a few lines or a few words ; scarcely is one 
 question interesting to the public discussed, before 
 another of equal importance succeeds it: civiliza- 
 tion seems to proceed at full gallop. Yet every- 
 thing is conducted without noise, and without 
 bustle: all have their places so well marked out, 
 their path traced so clearly before them, that all 
 those trials, all those fluctuations, that consume 
 so much time and power in countries not so well 
 organized, are wholly avoided. 
 
 With regard to political news publicity is so 
 much a common right, that a minister frequently 
 sends what he receives to the newspapers, even 
 before he communicates it to his colleagues. I 
 was accidentally at the office in Downing street, 
 when a diplomatist recently landed in England, 
 and quite fresh from the school of Ratisbon, came 
 to ask lord Castlereagh if he had received any 
 news. — "News!" answered his lordship: "yes 
 certainly, and very important news: here is the 
 second edition of the Courier j ust published ; read 
 it, and you will know all I know." Never in my 
 life shall I forget the countenance of the diplo- 
 
IGO LETTER IX. 
 
 matist, stupified at being acquainted in such a 
 simple manner with what was to be known by all 
 the world. " What ! " his looks seemed to say ; 
 ** not a note, not a memorandum, nothing official, 
 only a newspaper to send to my court ! I shall 
 neither have the honour of secrecy, nor the plea- 
 sure of indiscretion/' 
 
 There is no country in Europe where the trade 
 of embassador is more simple than in England ; 
 and where all the artifices, all the pretended skill 
 of diplomacy, would be more useless. All that a 
 stranger can know he may learn by reading atten- 
 tively the journals of the opposite parties : and as 
 to the facts or projects, which it is of importance 
 to the government to conceal, no questions, no 
 intrigue, no artifice of spies can discover them^ 
 The small number of persons employed by minis- 
 ters renders an indiscretion almost impossible: 
 and there are cabinet secrets, that are transmitted 
 from one administration to another of the most 
 opposite opinions and principles, without ever 
 being betrayed by party jealousies, or in the heat 
 of parliamentary debate. 
 . The larger the portion given to publicity, the" 
 
LETTEfi rx. 161 
 
 itiore impenetrable is what it is thought proper to 
 refuse it. This is not applicable to political ques- 
 tions alone, but to all the affairs of life. 
 
 The limits between what is exposed to discus- 
 sion, and the points on which it is forbidden to 
 touch, are traced by public opinion with a degree 
 of nicety, that may appear at first view over- 
 strained ; but the justice of which we are never- 
 theless compelled to acknowledge. A man who 
 would patiently suffer his simplest actions, his 
 slightest words, to be censured with asperity, 
 attacked with violence, or even ridiculed without 
 mercy, would take offence at the slightest sus- 
 picion of the sincerity of his intentions, or the 
 disclosure of a fact of no importance, if the 
 knowledge of it were acquired by an indiscretion. 
 The reason is, in the first case his conduct only is 
 attacked ; and a man's conduct, even in private 
 life, is more or less the property of the community : 
 while, in the second, we penetrate into the domains 
 of conscience, or the sanctuary of friendship. The 
 public opinion in this respect is perfectly equi- 
 table ; and the complaints of a nvan^ who felt 
 himself thus offended, would be ardently sup- 
 
162 LETTER IX. 
 
 ported even by those who would be the farthest 
 from feeling any good will toward the individual. 
 
 The intercourse between man and man in 
 England is often rude, but always just; and the 
 sense of right is common to all classes and all 
 opinions. It is the natural quality, the instinct, 
 as we may say, of every Englishman. 
 
 The insertion of advertisements relative to 
 business forms a considerable part of the profit 
 of an English newspaper. This branch of revenue 
 for the Times alone produces, I am told, more than 
 thirty thousand pounds sterling a year. The ad- 
 vantage of the most extensive publicity is so fully 
 appreciated by the merchant, the shopkeeper, the 
 manufacturer, and every one who is desirous of 
 selling the produce of his labour, or calling atten- 
 tion to a new undertaking, that no expense is 
 spared to promote this object. I have heard an 
 instance of a bookseller, who in a single year 
 expended ^C. 5,500 sterling in advertisements. 
 Frequent as these insertions in the newspapers 
 are* they do not satisfy the activity of the mercan- 
 tile world: there is no invention to which it does 
 not recur to draw crowds of customers. One has 
 
LETTER IX. 163 
 
 his name and address in gigantic characters posted 
 on the walls from Dover to the extremity of Scot- 
 land. Another, not content with these stationary- 
 announcements, employs constantly living and 
 moving advertisements, the sons of toil, whose 
 sole business is to parade through the most popu- 
 lous streets of large towns, with a huge printed 
 paper on aboard at the top of a pole. 
 
 The English, so simple in their manners, so ta- 
 citurn and circumspect in their conversation, have 
 recourse on these occasions to a superfluity of 
 bombastic puffs, that would not disgrace the elo- 
 quence of a quack in the public square of Naples. 
 This practice is so common, that it has even re- 
 ceived a particular name, lie art of puffing. But 
 no sooner has a shopkeeper or manufacturer ac- 
 quired any repute, than the national character 
 re-appears. The sentiment of his own dignity, 
 pride if you will, occasions the disappearance of 
 all this scaffolding : his name on his door in small 
 characters is deemed by him a sufficient recom- 
 mendation; and, after having long courted the 
 public, secure of his future success, he proudly 
 waits till the public comes to him. The quackery 
 
 M 2 
 
iG4 LETTER IX. 
 
 at the outset was only a judicious calculation, one 
 of the conditions necessary to the success of a 
 well-combined speculation. 
 
 I am afraid my letters will appear to you too 
 desultory; and that you will accuse me of a total 
 want of order and method. Idleness is perhaps 
 the sole cause of this fault, and I must submit to 
 your censure, or intreat your indulgence. But I 
 am not without a motive in following the clue of 
 my memory, without attempting a more philoso- 
 phical course. England, it is true, displays large 
 masses, which the observing eye may seize ; but 
 to take them in at one view, it must be stationed 
 at a distance. On coming near, on penetrating 
 into the country itself, and this is the aim of our 
 correspondence, we find ourselves in the midst of 
 a crowd of eccentricities, contrasts, anomalies of 
 every kind, the sinuosities of which it is neces- 
 sary to trace. Thus on looking closely at the 
 picture of a great master, whose style we w^ould 
 study, the groupes, which, from' a certain point of 
 view, formed the most harmonious whole, appear 
 only a mixture of colours thrown together at 
 random. 
 
LETTER iX. 165 
 
 Various as are the objects, that the public papers 
 in England embrace, literature is nearly excluded 
 from them; and I think, not without reason. 
 Straitened in space and time, in the fugitive pages 
 of a daily paper, literary criticism is necessarily 
 frivolous and superficial : it addresses itself to 
 vanity or idleness ; and to give or receive applause 
 is the only triumph of which it is ambitious. If 
 occasionally it become more serious ; if it seek 
 to penetrate into the depths of thought ; it appears 
 pedantic and bombastic, and seems out of place : 
 you seem to see a college professor, who has lost 
 himself in a gay assembly. Facts, above all 
 things, facts, and the few reflections immediately 
 flowing from them, are what the English public 
 justly require in a newspaper. It is to more 
 ample collections, appearing at longer intervals, 
 that it has recourse for information of the progress 
 of literature and philosophy. 
 
 These collections, of which the Edinburgh Re- 
 view was the first, effected a kind of revolution in 
 the intellectual world. Hitherto, literary journals 
 were nothing but booksellers' advertisements, in 
 which every publisher had the works he brought 
 
166 LETTER IX. 
 
 out praised as he thought proper. The Edin- 
 burgh Review began a new era : men of learning, 
 thinking men, politicians of the first rank, united 
 together, not merely to give an account of this 
 or that book, but to render a certain system of 
 principles and ideas triumphant. Their talents 
 and perseverance were crowned with success : 
 they had imitators and rivals, and reviews are 
 now become a real intellectual and political 
 engine. 
 
 I shall not trespass on your time, by speaking 
 to you of these different reviews, with which you 
 are as well acquainted as myself: I shall not even 
 dwell on those that may be considered as the or- 
 gans of the three great parties by which England 
 is divided.* I shall merely call your attention to 
 a feature common to them all : this is, in giving 
 an account of the principal works that appear, 
 they do not so much attempt to analyse them, 
 and judge of them separately, as to unite in one 
 point of view all publications of a similar kind ; 
 
 * The Edinburgh,' the Quarterly, and the Westminster Re- 
 view. 
 
LETTER IX. 167 
 
 and discuss with energy the subjects on which 
 they treat. In fact, this is the point that truly 
 concerns the public : this forms and daily aug- 
 ments that homogeneous mass of just and positive 
 notions, which cannot be too strongly pointed 
 out as one of the most essential characteristics of 
 England. 
 
I6S 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Of Puhlic Meetings. 
 
 A MAN of wit said : " The language of despotism 
 is, ' mind your own concerns :' that of liberty is, 
 * attend to things that don't concern you.' " In 
 this pithy form he announced a grand truth. 
 
 The constant aim of despotism is, to isolate 
 every thing that exists ; to make two portions of 
 the human species, one of which shall enjoy in 
 idleness the pleasures of power without control ; 
 while the other, devoted for ever to particular 
 employments, shall trace, like the ox, one uniform 
 furrow. In a free country, on the contrary, 
 nothing that affects any class of citizens, can be 
 foreign to the rest of the community. There is 
 not an Englishman, however humble the rank 
 in which he was born, who i.i not justly entitled 
 
LETl^R X. 169 
 
 to think, that his opinion i« of some weight in the 
 affairs of his country ; and, reciprocally, there is 
 no individual so exalted, as for his daily conduct 
 to be exempt from the examination and judgment 
 of the public. 
 
 With us publicity is considered as an extreme 
 resource, an ultiina ratio populi, to M'liich we have 
 recourse only in desperate cases, and after having 
 exhausted all other means of attaining our object-. 
 If persons engage in an undertaking of public or 
 private concern, they always found their hopes 
 of success on the disposition of men in power • 
 business is conducted in the closet of the minister, 
 or in the drawing-room of some man of weight. 
 While there is any chance of succeeding' through 
 favour, it would appear rude or indiscreet to 
 speak out, and call on the public to judge of our 
 griefs or projects. In England publicity is a 
 matter of common right : men address themselves 
 to the opinion of the public at once : this is the 
 first power, the support of which they solicit ; 
 and even men desirous of treating with govern- 
 ment would begin by seeking popularity, well 
 
170 LETTER X. 
 
 knowing it would be for the interest of their 
 ambition. 
 
 Is an abuse to be reformed, an improvement to 
 be introduced, a right to be claimed, a new 
 institution to be founded? whether it concern 
 religion, morality, liberty, or the public wealth, 
 the first indispensable step is to enlighten public 
 opinion on the point in question. The attempt 
 to fix the public attention is begun by writing 
 pamphlets or paragraphs in the newspapers. Then 
 a few people of note form a committee, and pre- 
 pare a string of resolutions, which are submitted 
 to general discussion. When agreed so far, a 
 meeting is called, either in the open air, or in 
 one of the large rooms adapted to the purpose, 
 which are to be found in almost every large town 
 in England. A chairman, called on by the public 
 voice, presides over the meeting : the resolutions 
 are discussed, and put to the vote ; and, amid 
 the most stormy debates, a certain familiarity 
 with the . forms of deliberation, common to all 
 classes of the people, maintains order, and pro- 
 tects the rights of the minority. 
 
LETTER X. 171 
 
 Frequently, at these meetings, orators before 
 unknown appear in public for the first time, and 
 display talents, that perhaps pave the way for 
 their future admission to the senate. The next 
 day their speeches are printed in all the news- 
 papers, and resound throughout all England. 
 The first meeting gives rise to others, men's minds 
 are enlightened and warmed, and the public opi- 
 nion acquires a degree of force, any resistance to 
 which would be useless. 
 
 It is not without reason, therefore, that the 
 English set so high a value on the right to as- 
 semble for the discussion of public affairs, and 
 place it in the first rank of their constitutional 
 prerogatives. The right of petitioning, as they 
 conceive it, is nothing but the right of meeting to 
 deliberate on the requests or complaints expressed 
 in the petition ; for the houses of Parliament are 
 not expected to decide like judges on every 
 requisition addressed to it. Particular cogni- 
 zance is taken of a petition, only when it is made 
 the subject of a motion by some one of the mem- 
 bers. The right of introducing a subject is not 
 given indiscriminately to the public at large. 
 
172 LETTER X. 
 
 which would be a confusion of power leading to 
 anarchy. But what is justly required is, that 
 public opinion should enjoy the utmost latitude 
 in forming and expressing itself. Now frequent 
 and numerous public meetings are indispensable 
 to this. It is truly ridiculous to speak of liberty 
 in a country, where every periodical meeting of 
 more than twenty persons is illegal without the 
 sanction of government ; and this article of our 
 laws is one of a thousand proofs of the melan- 
 choly truth, that the imperial despotism still 
 constitutes the basis of all our political system, 
 and that the charter has scarcely modified its 
 surface. 
 
 The right of meeting has undergone some re- 
 strictions, at first under Mr. Pitt and subse- 
 quently under lord Castlereagh, against which 
 the opposition violently exclaimed. It has branded 
 with the name of gagging bills the various acts, 
 that set certain limits to the exercise of this 
 right, as well as to other points of the liberties of 
 the people ; and some novices among the liberals 
 of the Continent have taken pride in asserting, 
 (hat England was enslaved. An anxious jealousy 
 
LETTER X. 173 
 
 of the slightest infringement of the rights of the 
 people inspires me with too much respect for 
 them, to undertake the defence of the restrictive 
 measures adopted by the English government. 
 They are vexatious in several respects. But as 
 it appears to me well worthy attention, to point 
 out what the friends of liberty in England have 
 considered as a serious stretch of authority, [ 
 will recapitulate some of the clauses of the act of 
 1820, which laid a temporary restraint on the 
 power of meeting in public ; and I believe you 
 will exclaim with me : — Would to Heaven we 
 were enslaved in the same way ! 
 
 The act in question prohibits, it is true, every 
 meeting of more than fifty persons in the open 
 air, to discuss any question relative to religion, 
 politics, or government : but the various excep- 
 tions it allows to this prohibition leave to the 
 right of meeting a latitude, that the most ardent 
 friends of liberty would scarcely venture to claim 
 for it in France. 
 
 In fact, it excepts county meetings, and those 
 of districts, provided they are convened by the 
 lord lieutenant, governor, sheriff, deputy sheriff. 
 
174 LETTER X. 
 
 or various other magistrates, according to local 
 circumstances; or, lastly, by five justices of 
 peace acting in concert. 
 
 Equally excepted are meetings convened by a 
 majority of the grand jury during the assizes; 
 public meetings of the inhabitants of any city, 
 borough, or corporation town, when called by the 
 mayor, bailiff, or other civil officer, holding the 
 supreme authority of the place. 
 
 Observe here, that many of the magistrates, to 
 whom the right of convening these meetings 
 is allowed, are elected by the people, others are 
 not removeable, and all exercise their offices 
 gratuitously, and are chosen without distinction 
 of party from those classes, who are rendered 
 independent by their fortune and understanding: 
 so that it is impossible for any serious grievance to 
 arise, or any question of importance, without the 
 persons whose interests are affected, or opinions 
 wounded, being sure of making their complaints 
 heard in a numerous meeting of their fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 This is not all. None of the formalities I have 
 pointed out are applicable to meetings composed 
 
LETTER X. 175 
 
 solely of the inhabitants of the parish where they 
 take place, meetings that may often consist of 
 large numbers, owing to the populousness of 
 many parishes, particularly those in or near 
 cities. All that is requisite in this case is, that 
 the meeting" be called by seven resident inha- 
 bitants, and six days notice of it given to a justice 
 of the peace. 
 
 Lastly, to what penalty do persons render 
 themselves liable by being present at an illegal 
 meeting ? None, if they separate, when called 
 upon so to do by a magistrate. It is only in case 
 of resistance, that the law displays its rigours. 
 
 Remark too, that the act, of which I have given 
 you a summary, having in view only the pre- 
 vention of seditious meetings, or at least of large 
 assemblies in the open air, which might become 
 dangerous in a moment of effervescence, no idea 
 occurred of applying them to the innumerable 
 societies, that are meeting daily in all parts of 
 England, to consider matters of general utility. 
 
 What an afflicting contrast does our legislation 
 here exhibit! In France, not only can no such 
 society meet without the express permission of 
 
176 LETTER X. 
 
 government, that is to say, of the police ; but the 
 small number of those tolerated enjoy with fear 
 and trembling a precarious existence, of which 
 the slightest caprice may deprive them. 
 
 In a country, where every thing is treated 
 publicly; where every thing is subjected to dis- 
 cussion, from the most important questions of 
 legislation, to the slightest of local affairs ; the 
 talent of speaking must naturally be an object of 
 universal ambition. At school, and even in their 
 play, children exercise themselves in political 
 eloquence. At Eton and Westminster, they fre- 
 quently form a little house of commons, subjected 
 to regulations similar to those of the parliament. 
 When at the university, the young men unite in 
 debating societies, where questions of history^ 
 philosophy, legislation, and political economy, 
 are discussed in form. At these, are frequently 
 developed the germes of the greatest talents : and 
 an orator, whose eloquence will some day be 
 the pride of England, may have felt the first 
 spark of his genius elicited by the applauses of his 
 fellow-students. 
 
 These debating societies are not confined to 
 
LETTEK X. 177 
 
 the wealthy and enlightened classes: a taste for 
 them is found in all ranks. At London, and in other 
 large towns, there are public debating societies, 
 where persons pay for admission. The question 
 is posted up at the door; and for a shilling any 
 casual passenger may enter, and take a part 
 in the debates, from which the politics of the day 
 are not excluded, and where the Holy Alliance 
 itself has been more than once the subject of 
 irreverent jests. I never had an opportunity of 
 being present at one of these meetings, which 
 I regret: but 1 am assured, that it is not un- 
 common to hear at them popular orators, endued 
 with a flow of speech, energetic, if not correct, 
 and capable of making an impression on their 
 auditory. 
 
 The debating societies however are merely sup- 
 plementary, and not essential parts of the system : 
 but all the institutions, that constitute the basis of 
 the social order, as juries, managing committees, 
 municipal councils, parochial and county meet- 
 ings, and elections, presume habits of speaking, 
 and a knowledge of the forms of deliberation. 
 We scarcely find a man, that has received any 
 
178 LETTER X. 
 
 education, who does know how to preside at 
 a meeting, direct its debates, and put questions 
 to the vote in due order. There are indispen- 
 sable notions in respect to tliis, which are so 
 familiar to the people of England, that no one 
 would think of making them an object of study; 
 while with us, they who have grown old in our 
 deliberative assemblies still remain ignorant of 
 them. 
 
 The contrasts of the English character show 
 themselves no where so whimsically as at public 
 meetings. I know a man, whose timidity in 
 company is scarcely equalled by that of a girl of 
 fifteen, who in a drawing room would not 
 answer the simplest question without blushing and 
 confusion, yet if invited to give his opinion at a 
 public meeting would rise without hesitation, and 
 speak for more than an hour in an easy and 
 copious style before thousands of his fellow 
 citizens. 
 
 Written speeches, prohibited in parliament by 
 its rules, are equally so by custom in every 
 other assembly. To speak in public, and to speak 
 e.\tempore, are synonimous terms; and the idea 
 
LETTER X. 179 
 
 of carrying' ready drawn up in the pocket the 
 expression of sentiments, that might arise from 
 circumstances yet to come, or of an opinion, that 
 ought to be formed from a discussion not yet 
 begun, would appear the extreme of ridiculous- 
 ness. No one supposes a person can find it 
 difficult, to relate what he knows, or say what he 
 thinks: whoever expresses himself with simpli- 
 city and modesty, obtains a favourable hearing, 
 and the severity or the indulgence of the public 
 is apportioned with remarkable justice to what 
 it has a right to expect from the talents or 
 condition of the individual. 
 
 Public dinners are one of the most common 
 occasions of the exercise of oratory. The object 
 of these dinners is to keep up the spirit of an 
 association, or to encourage the study of some 
 science, by bringing together persons, who other- 
 wise would have no opportunity of freely com- 
 municating to each other their ideas ; or to keep 
 alive political opinions, by celebrating the anni- 
 versary of an important event, the birth of a great 
 man, or the election of a member of the house of 
 commons dear to his country. Nothing is more 
 
 N 2 
 
180 LETTER X. 
 
 original than these political dinners. Many times 
 I have seen nearly three hundred persons seated 
 at the same table, and electrified by the same 
 sentiment, without the vivacity of their emotions 
 preventing them from observing with the most 
 methodical regularity all the usages established 
 on such occasions. 
 
 A chairman is seated at the head of the table. 
 No meeting takes place without this formality, 
 which seems indispensable for securing order and 
 regularity in every kind of discussion. The 
 English of all classes have a remarkable tact 
 in this respect ; and if a speaker deviate ever so 
 little from the established rules of decorum, a cry 
 of chair! chair! resounds on all sides. This is a 
 kind of appeal to the abstract idea of a president, 
 informing him who executes the functions of one, 
 that he is expected to maintain order, or restore 
 the due state of the question. At the other end 
 of the table sits the depntii-chairman, whose busi- 
 ness is to preside, when the chairman himself is 
 called upon to take a part in the debate ; for 
 there are two invariable axioms, one, that the 
 meeting must never be without a head, the other, 
 
Li,TTh;n X. 181 
 
 that the person who is officiating as president 
 cannot act as a party in the debate at the same 
 time. When will these first rudiments of all 
 deliberative assemblies become familiar to us ? 
 On the right hand and left of the chairman, places 
 are reserved for those orators who will be invited 
 to speak, or for those on whom it is wished to 
 confer a mark of distinction. 
 
 At the dessert, when the cloth is removed, 
 according to the custom yet pretty general in 
 England, a master of the ceremonies, standing 
 behind the president's chair with a glass in his 
 hand, informs the company, that the toasts are 
 going to commence. It is usual to begin with 
 the king, then the duke of York and the army, 
 then the duke of Clarence and the navy, either 
 with plaudits or in silence, according to the oc- 
 casion or sentiments of the meeting. Then come 
 the toasts appropriate to the occasion of the 
 meeting, as the health of the member whose 
 election is celebrated. " Gentlemen, fill your 
 glasses," cries the master of the ceremonies : 
 after which he gives three times three huzzas. 
 These are repeated in a low voice by all the 
 
182 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 company; and it is only at the ninth that the 
 enthusiasm, even if it be at its height, allows itself 
 to break out in shouts and plaudits. He whose 
 health has been drunk then rises, stands up on his 
 chair, or on the table itself, amid the plates and 
 glasses, and there, after having returned thanks to 
 the assembly, with an expression of humility some- 
 times much greater than is necessary, gives an 
 account of his conduct, retraces the history of his 
 political life, or repeats in a gayer and more striking 
 form the opinions he has delivered in parliament. 
 
 At meetings of this kind have been delivered 
 some of the most memorable speeches of Brougham, 
 Mackintosh, and Canning. The eloquence of a 
 politician then becomes the property of those who 
 hear him: they adopt it; they imbue themselves 
 with his ideas; he is no longer an imaginary being 
 to them; he is their comrade, their guest; they have 
 heard the sound of his voice, and observed the 
 expression of his countenance. Thenceforward the 
 connexion between the member and his constituents 
 assumes a new interest: the man ennobles by 
 his courage or talents the people of his native town, 
 br the corporation that has adopted him. 
 
LETTER X. 183 
 
 One orator succeeds another; fresh toasts are 
 drunk with three times three; and speech follows 
 speech, till late at night, without the crowd of 
 guests appearing tired of them, even though they 
 have gradually descended step by step to orators 
 of very ordinary abilities; so many charms has a 
 political life for the citizens of a free country. 
 
 The most solemn dinners are those of the lord 
 mayor, given in the Guildhall at London. The 
 historical events of which the place reminds us, 
 the immense number of guests, the dresses of old 
 times, the banners displayed, the music, the 
 flourish of trumpets at every toast, all give these 
 assemblies a character of grandeur and originality, 
 to which nothing on the Continent affords any 
 resemblance. 
 
 Perhaps I should now speak to you of the reli- 
 gious and philanthropic meetings, that act so 
 great a part in the social organization of England : 
 but every thing relating to the religious state of this 
 country is of too high importance to be treated of 
 incidentally, and I shall defer it to a future time, if 
 you continue to feel interested in my corres- 
 pondence. 
 
184 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 
 County Meetitigs. 
 
 Of all the public assemblages of persons in Eng- 
 land, perhaps none are so striking to a stranger as 
 county meetings. These are usually held in the 
 open air, in a market place, a court before a town- 
 hall, or some frequented public walk; for the 
 number of persons collected by interest or curio- 
 sity is too great, for any public room to contain 
 them. And in fact, though the freeholders of the 
 county are the only persons who have a right to 
 vote at them, almost any one, that chooses to 
 be present, is admitted without distinction. The 
 business is not to decide as legislators or judges 
 on positive rights or interests, but to consult, or 
 to guide the opinions of the many. 
 
 I will give you the best idea of the ctfect these 
 
LETTER X[. 185 
 
 meetings must })roduce, by describing one at 
 which I was present. Particular circumstances 
 having rendered it sufficiently curious, you will 
 find the account of it not uninteresting-. 
 
 In the autumn of 1822, the fall in the price of 
 cbrn, and the high rents of farms let on lease 
 during the war, when the price of whe;it was 
 exorbitant, had plunged the agricultural class into 
 a state of distress and alarm. This distress, which 
 was greatly exaggerated, and was merely tempo- 
 rary, as events proved, was not indeed altogether 
 unfounded at that period. Landholders, who had 
 increased their expenditure in proportion to the 
 rise of their rents, did not readily consent to 
 relinquish any of the gratifications of their luxury : 
 the farmers, who, seduced by the high price of 
 produce, had taken leases, the conditions of which 
 they were unable to fulfil, complained bitterly: 
 the day labourers were without employment, or 
 could not obtain adequate wages. Murmurs 
 arose from all quarters; and nothing was heard 
 but the voice of distress amid a country, in the 
 most flourishino' state that the imaiiination can 
 conceive. 
 
186 LETTER XI. 
 
 In our continental monarchies the people know 
 scarcely any alternative but tame submission, or 
 revolt. The greatest injustice is patiently borne 
 by them, or they quarrel with government on 
 account of those evils, which it is least in its 
 power to prevent. It is not thus in England. 
 When any class of the community suffers, it is 
 from its own efforts in the first place, that it seeks 
 the alleviation of the evil: speeches are made, 
 writings published, and meetings held, till the 
 required remedy is found, or the natural course of 
 time brings things to their proper level; and, if 
 we may be allowed a common comparison, si 
 MAGNA licet componei^e parvis, the whole country 
 exibits the image of an ant-hill. Does any acci- 
 dent disturb its economy? we instantly see the 
 whole republic in motion, and it does not rest, till 
 the common edifice is reconstructed. 
 
 At the time of which I am speaking, in almost 
 all the counties of England meetings were held, 
 to discuss the means of improving the condi- 
 tion of the agricultural class, the landed interest. 
 Numerous petitions were addressed to the house 
 of commons ; and almost all concluded with calling 
 
LETTER Xf. 187 
 
 for a reform of parliament, a sort of panacea, which 
 few think of when the country is in a prosperous 
 state, but from which wondrous effects are 
 expected, when it experiences any difficulties. 
 
 The meeting at which I was present was that of 
 the county of Kent, one of the most important in 
 the kingdom, from its extent, its wealth, and its 
 population. The inhabitants of this county, proud 
 of some ancient prerogatives, still emphatically 
 style themselves Men of Kent.^ The meeting was 
 held in the town of Maidstone, five and thirty 
 miles from London. I set off" in the morning with 
 some great landholders of the county, whigs, 
 whose friendship I had the honour of enjoying. 
 We passed through a wonderful rich country ; and, 
 on all parts of the road my companions were 
 treated with that assiduous respect, which the 
 English aristocracy obtains from all classes of 
 
 * The author is mistaken in this general application of the 
 term. Few English readers are unaware, that the descendants 
 of the ancient natives of the county, who greatly distinguished 
 themselves by their opposition to William the Conqueror, style 
 themselves Mai of Kent, by way of distinction from the modern 
 inhabitants, whom they call Kentish men. Tr. 
 
188 LETTER XI. 
 
 people, if they who possess the advantages of 
 rank and fortune be not wholly destitute of per- 
 sonal merit. On approaching Maidstone we met 
 with a great number of land-holders and farmers, 
 going to the meeting like ourselves, almost all of 
 them on horseback; for, amid the pretended dis- 
 tress of the country, there was scarcely a farmer, 
 who did not consider one or two saddle-horses 
 among the necessaries of life. 
 
 We alighted at an inn, where we found some of 
 the persons of greatest consequence in the vicinity 
 already met in committee. A draft of a petition 
 had been prepared the day before; in which the 
 grievances of the agricultural class were enume- 
 rated, next a reduction of taxes was called for, as 
 well as measures to raise the price of corn, and 
 lastly a reform of parliament was demanded, as 
 the only remedy of all the evils of the state. This 
 project seemed calculated to satisfy the wishes of 
 the most democratic. It was then discussed, 
 slight amendments were made in it, and prepara- 
 tions to submit it to the general meeting, every 
 thing inducing a presumption, that it would be 
 adopted there without opposition. 
 
LETTER Xl. 189 
 
 The hour of meeting arrived, and we went 
 down to the market-place. It was market-day : 
 some thousands of people were already as- 
 sembled : all the windows of the adjacent houses 
 were filled with spectators : with the noise of 
 the crowd were mingled the lowing of oxen, the 
 bleating of sheep, and all the confused bustle of 
 buying and selling. The impatient multitude 
 thronged round some carts placed for the con- 
 venience of the speakers, and across one of which 
 were the two deal boards, serving as the chair 
 and desk of the sheriff, who presided at the meet- 
 ing. Some got up on the wheels, others mounted 
 on ladders, in the most awkward and dan- 
 gerous positions, that they might be certain of 
 not losing a word of what was said ; so extremely 
 sensible are the lower classes of people in Eng- 
 land, of the pleasures of political eloquence. 
 
 But amid all this bustle, the carts, one ex- 
 cepted, remained empty. No person, even of 
 those most greedy of the pleasures of the day, 
 thought of scaling them ; though there were no 
 armed men present to guard them, no decree 
 prohibiting access. " For whom are those places 
 
190 LETTER XI. 
 
 reserved ?" said I to the person next me. " For 
 the gentlemeti" answered he. Now who were these 
 gentlemen? Were they privileged persons^ who 
 could claim this mark of honour? By no means. 
 Had they any distinguishing sign, to make them- 
 selves known? None whatever. Public noto- 
 riety alone designated them : and amid a scene 
 of the greatest confusion, a general sentiment of 
 decorum taught every one, that the best places 
 were due to the peers of the realm, the members 
 of the house of commons, justices of the peace; 
 in short, to all those who, from their station in 
 society, are more especially called on, to know 
 and discuss the interests of their country ; lastly, to 
 all, who, from their education and way of life 
 are included in the generic term gentlemeii. But 
 scarcely had the gentlemen taken their places, 
 scarcely had the sheriff declared the meeting 
 opened, when the carts were instantly scaled, and 
 thronged by the crowd, so that the orators 
 themselves, to be in a situation to be heard, were 
 obliged to support themselves on the shoulders 
 and arms of their friends. 
 
 After the sheriff had announced the purpose 
 
LETTER XT. 191 
 
 of the meeting, a member of parliament, the 
 representative of the whigs of the county, made 
 a speech, in which he explained the motives of 
 the intended petition. The conduct of the mi- 
 nistry, and the increase of taxes, owing to ruinous 
 and impolitic wars, were naturally the subjects 
 of his discourse, more than once interrupted by 
 a thunder of applause from ten thousand au- 
 ditors. 
 
 The assembly appeared to be unanimous : how 
 ever, sir Edward Knatchbull, the ministerial 
 member, though almost alone, thought it incum- 
 bent on him, not to let the speech of his colleague 
 pass unanswered ; and, after some oratorical 
 compliments, of which the English are as pro- 
 digal in popular meetings as they are sparing in 
 courts of justice and debates in parliament, boldly 
 undertook to defend the opinions of the ministry 
 who were there at least in a great minority. His 
 speech was listened to without favour, but with 
 impartiality ; and the orator was respected for 
 having acquitted himself of his task in a frank 
 and manly manner, a term which, in the English 
 
192 LETTER Xr. 
 
 language and spirit, is one of the greatest testi- 
 monies of esteem. 
 
 The petition experienced no opposition, and 
 the sheriff was about to put it to the vote, when 
 a voice was heard from the midst of the cart most 
 thronged by the mob, claiming the right of moving 
 an amendment. Every eye was directed to that 
 quarter; where a man with grey hairs, bnt stout 
 made, and with a bold countenance, made way 
 through his friends, and advanced to speak. This 
 was the famous Cobbett. He was received with 
 a general mumur of disapprobation. " No Cob- 
 bett! no Jacobins!" exclaimed more than one 
 voice. However, a nobleman in opposition claim- 
 ed leave for him to speak. " Is he a freeholder 
 of the county ? " was asked on all sides. "Yes, 
 I am," answered Cobbett, with a firm voice. 
 /* Then you have a right to be heard," replied 
 the sheriff ; " and it is my duty to support you 
 in it." The following is in few words the be- 
 ginning of Cobbett's speech, as far as my recol- 
 lection enables me to give it : — 
 
 ** I see the meeting is not inclined to give me a 
 
LpTTER X[. J 93 
 
 favourable reception. I will be brief; and my 
 language shall be so clear, that the labourer, who 
 stands there before me in his smock frock, shall 
 lose none of ray words, and will hand them down, 
 I hope, to his children. On all sides I hear a call 
 for parliamentary reform, as the only remedy of 
 the ills you suffer. But who were the first to 
 proclaim this truth? Who, but the radicals* 
 that have been claiming for more than twenty 
 years for the people of England those rights, of 
 which an arrogant aristocracy has deprived them? 
 And what has been our reward ? We have been 
 insulted, banished, imprisoned : the blood of the 
 best citizens of England has been shed on the 
 plains of Manchester. I myself have been obliged 
 to flee my country, and seek refuge beyond the 
 ocean. I return home, and what do I see ? The 
 great lords of this qounty come themselves to 
 propose to you that reform which, but the other 
 day they treated as chimerical and a crime. I 
 will do you justice, gentlemen whigs; your an- 
 cestors deserved well of England at the time of 
 the revolution : I will even allow, that you are 
 less enemies to your country, than the courtiers 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 LETTER Xr. 
 
 atid usurers, who enrich themselves by lending 
 at high interest money to supply foolish expenses 
 and unjust wars. But what is this to me, if you 
 continue to profit by the corruption, against 
 which you seem to contend? What is it to me, 
 if, while preaching up reform, you retain your 
 rotten boroughs, under pretence, that it would 
 not be wise to give them up while the tories 
 hold theirs ? This shameful traffic has continued 
 too long. The time is come to speak to you in 
 harsher language, and you shall hear it from my 
 mouth. Submit, without longer delay, to the 
 sacrifice of your boroughs ; or prepare your- 
 selves for the sacrifice of your mansions and your 
 fortunes." 
 
 During this exordium, hawkers in different 
 parts of the market displayed at a distance large 
 papers, the true standards of radicalism, in which 
 the different pamphlets of Cobbett were recom- 
 mended to the notice of the populace. A low 
 murmur apprised the orator, that his words had 
 made some impression ; and he availed himself 
 ably of the disposition of the people's minds. He 
 ran over the different abuses of the aristocratieal 
 
LETTER XI. 195 
 
 system, both in church and state : then, assuming 
 a more temperate tone, he proposed, as an amend- 
 ment to the address, a reduction of the ,public 
 debt, founded on the justice of making- the fund- 
 holders participate in that reduction of income, 
 which all other classes had experienced, either by 
 the fall in the price of corn, or by the resumption 
 of cash payments. 
 
 Cobbett was succeeded by another orator of 
 the same stamp, an auctioneer of Rochester, as 
 I was informed, who, in language nervous, if not 
 correct, and not unacquainted with the political 
 history of his country, entered more at large 
 into the amendment proposed by the leader of 
 his party, and completed the conquest of the 
 meeting. 
 
 The amendment of Cobbett was in fact no- 
 thing else than a proposal of bankruptcy, thinly 
 disguised : but to demonstrate this in a satisfac- 
 tory manner required entering into considerations 
 of political economy, little adapted to the com- 
 V prehension of a moveable and impatient audience. 
 Besides, some of the whigs had wandered a little 
 from sound principles, in a debate in parliament 
 
 2 
 
196 E15TTER XI. 
 
 on the same subject; and it became difficult 
 perhaps for their friends, victoriously to combat 
 the proposal of the radicals ; so that their efforts 
 to reject it were of no avail. The amendment 
 was carried by a great majority: and, the more 
 to confirm his triumph, Cobbett assumed the 
 merit of allowing it to be put to the vote twice. 
 
 Here then we have a victory gained by the 
 leader of the Jacobin party, by a man all whose 
 writings have a subversive and revolutionary 
 tendency! and this victory is gained not over 
 a few obscure ministerialists but over the whigs, 
 over the most considerable and most justly re- 
 spected landholders of the county. He threatened 
 them in the public market-place, in the midst of 
 an assembled crowd, with the loss of their pri- 
 vileges and the spoliation of their property; and 
 he gained a majority. Would you not suppose 
 the country to be on the eve of a revolution ? 
 that the people were about to rise, the lower 
 classes to rush on the superior ranks, and the 
 whole edifice of English aristocracy to fall with a 
 terrible crash ? Let us imagine ourselves present 
 at a similar scene in the vicinity of Paris, and 
 
LETTER XI. 
 
 197 
 
 form to ourselves, if possible, an adequate idea of 
 the terror of the government. How many agents 
 of the police, how many gendarmes, how many 
 troops would be in motion ! A thousand times too 
 happy, if some stupidly ferocious soldier, certain 
 of impunity, did not fire upon the people, with- 
 out any authority but his own fancy! 
 
 Nothing of the kind occurs in England, unless 
 on the most serious occasions. No troops, no 
 gendarmes, no other spies than a few short-hand 
 writers, se«iding off in haste their despatches to 
 the proprietors of newspapers, by whom they are 
 employed. After a momentary agitation, order is 
 restored; and the people, satisfied with having 
 enjoyed their rights, retire more attached than 
 ever to the institutions, by which these rights are 
 secured. 
 
 This was what took place on the occasion 
 of which I am speaking. After a few transient 
 successes of Cobbett, Hunt, and their adherents, 
 the good sense of the nation resumed its power, 
 and the whigs had the majority at the county 
 meetings. I myself saw the people assembled at 
 Maidstone separate, ashamed at having been led 
 
198 LETTER XI. 
 
 away by a man, neither whose character nor 
 opinions inspired esteem. I returned to London 
 with the same persons, whom I accompanied in 
 the morning. They did not experience fewer 
 testimonies of respect than before : nothing was 
 changed; there was not the least apprehension of 
 the stability of rank or property : and ten thousand 
 men voting a national bankruptcy thirty miles 
 from the capital did not even occasion the slightest 
 variation in the price of stocks. 
 
 It would be wrong to conclude from this, that 
 county meetings are empty ceremonies, a sort of 
 saturnalia for the day, without any influence on 
 the morrow. These meetings have a real influence 
 on the opinions of the many: they enlighten and 
 confirm them : they keep up among the people 
 of England a sense of their rights and of their 
 strength, without which all written securities are 
 vain: and a statesman must be destitute of judg- 
 ment and foresight, who does not lend an at- 
 tentive ear to the wishes expressed in meetings of 
 this kind. 
 
 Do you think, perhaps I shall be asked, that 
 popular meetings could be introduced into France 
 
LETTER XI. 
 
 190 
 
 without danger? and that, to be really useful, 
 they do not require a counterpoise of equal 
 weight with that of the English aristocracy? 
 This question is too comprehensive, and would 
 carry me too far: but this at least I believe, 
 an order of things, that allows the people to give 
 full scope to their intellectual energy, and expend 
 in an animated or even turbulent debate that 
 superfluity of life, which is found in nations as 
 well as individuals, is preferable to that in which 
 men's activity, repressed by despotism, or re- 
 strained by the pedantic sillinesses that are deco- 
 rated with the name of regulations, has no alter- 
 native but to groan under the weight that presses 
 it down, or open itself a path in blood by over- 
 turning all the barriers of society. 
 
 The longer a people has been bound up in the 
 swaddling clothes of the police, the more pre- 
 cautions no doubt should be taken on the first 
 exercise of liberty; but we are not thence to 
 conclude, that it must be left to stagnate for ever 
 in servile apathy. 
 
200 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 
 Gj the Functions of Parliament. 
 
 After having spoken in my last letters of some 6f 
 tli'e jfiublie assemblies ill England, I am naturally- 
 led to speak of thfe parliament ; and I am mis- 
 taken, if you have not already conceived a more 
 accurate idea of it, than is generally entertained 
 on the Continent, though nothing has yet been 
 said on the subject. In fact, the parliament is 
 nothing more than a public meeting, more solemn 
 and more powerful than others, but allied to them 
 ih a thousand different ways, whether we con- 
 sider its composition, its forms, or its functions. 
 
 In countries where a representative government 
 is of recent importation ; and where an imitation 
 of the English constitution, more or less disfigured, 
 
LETTER Xil. 201 
 
 has been superinduced on a monarchical adminis- 
 tration, there is an actual discord between the 
 parliamentary debates and the general body of 
 established forms. Amid a people destitute of 
 rights and public morals, the kgislative body 
 appears like a sort of knight-errant, coming 
 annually to break a lance with the minister. A 
 few placemen may be unhorsed in the career; 
 but, when the session is over, every thing resumes 
 its ordinary course. It is but a momentary vexa- 
 tion ; and the ministers think they do wonders, 
 when, by depriving the chambers of the liberty 
 of introducing any business, and refusing them 
 the most indispensable information, under pre- 
 tence of I know not what prerogative of the 
 crown, or some other legal exception, they reduce 
 the legislative body to a mere nullity. 
 
 The English ministers are not more enamoured 
 of public liberty than ours, but they are less 
 novices in constitutional matters: their notions 
 are less confined, and, far from being punctilious 
 respecting the extent of the functions of parlia- 
 ment, they desire no better, than to shift to it 
 from their own shoulders a part of the business of 
 
202 LETTER XTI. 
 
 government, by way of diminishing their own 
 responsibility. Accordingly we find the number 
 of legislative acts increasing rapidly within these 
 forty years: from 1781 to 1791 they averaged 
 171 in a session: from 1812 to 1822 the number 
 was doubled, averaging 348 : and since this they 
 have gone on increasing. 
 
 In this number, it is true, are included all 
 measures of local or individual concern, known 
 by the name of 'private bills ; such as roads to be 
 made, canals to be formed, marshes to be drained, 
 commons to be divided and enclosed, &c. I have 
 often heard it said on the Continent, that affairs of 
 this kind were more advantageously placed in the 
 hands of government, than in those of a delibera- 
 tive assembly, and I have sometimes allowed 
 myself a little too lightly to think so : but reflec- 
 tion has led me to the contrary opinion, which 
 will readily be embraced by all who have had 
 the misfortune to pass through the interminable 
 maze \^JiUhre'] of ministerial offices and the 
 council of state, either for a grant of mines, a 
 stream of water, or any enterprise relative to 
 agriculture, trade, or manufactures. 
 
LETTER xir. 203 
 
 When a question of private concern is submit- 
 ted to parliament, it arrives there previously 
 sifted by discussion on the spot, either among 
 the justices of peace assembled at the quarter 
 sessions, or among the different persons interested 
 in it at a meeting held for this special purpose. 
 The committees of the house of commons, to 
 which the question is referred, are never without 
 one or more members, who are masters of all the 
 local circumstances. If any difficulties arise, 
 the committees have authority to send for wit- 
 nesses and men of science from the extremities of 
 the country, whose interrogatories, rendered 
 public by the press, leave not the least shadow 
 of doubt on any of the different points, which it 
 may be necessary to elucidate. 
 
 Such a course is not only the most speedy, but 
 affords most securities against abuses of all kinds. 
 For, though such a great number of bills are 
 adopted with a promptitude, that is astonishing 
 to those who know nothing of parliament but from 
 its public debates, and have not studied the mode 
 of conducting business intrinsically by com- 
 mittees ; it is because the houses of parliament 
 
204 LETTER XII. 
 
 are certain, that these bills, before being finally 
 submitted to them, have undergone a mature 
 examination ; and are too sparing of their time, 
 to waste it in empty forms. But if any right be 
 infringed, if any error or culpable connivance be 
 suspected, the same bills would become the sub- 
 ject of a debate as long and as animated, as the 
 most serious concerns of the state. 
 
 My object, however, is not to enter with you 
 at large into the proceedings and powers of the 
 house of commons : but I think it essential to 
 remind you, that its functions, far from being 
 confined within certain legislative limits invariably 
 fixed, really extend to affairs of all kinds, to all 
 concerns, where its interference may be of utility; 
 from the questions of peace or war, to the main- 
 tenance of a road between neighbouring places ; 
 from the rights of the crown, and the manaoement 
 of the civil list, to the disbursements of a country 
 parish. In fact, if some lawyers assert, that the 
 "house of commons represents exclusively, as its 
 name indicates, the commons by whom it is 
 elected ; others, on the contrary, and they are 
 persons whose opinions have most weight, main- 
 
LETTER XII. 205 
 
 tain, that it is the virtual representativa cf the 
 interests of the state at large, those of the crown, 
 and those of the peerage, as well as those of the 
 people. ** The parliament moderateth the king's 
 prerogative, and nothing grows to abuse, but this 
 house has power to treat of it." Such was the 
 constitutional doctrine, that was laid down as a 
 principle so early as the reign of Henry III, ; and 
 has now taken root in the minds of all men. 
 
 The parliament is the grand council of the king 
 and of the nation: it does not merely discuss legis- 
 lative questions, but it manages the affairs of the 
 country ; and in this view is the supreme regulator 
 of all other political bodies, of all the associa- 
 tions, that are occupied with the concerns of the 
 whole or part of the community. Most of these 
 associations have among them members of both 
 houses, whence arise many natural and daily 
 communications between the parliament and the 
 different bodies of the state. 
 
 If the affairs of a county or a town be in ques- 
 tion, the debates in parliament turn on the wishes 
 publicly expressed in the county meetings or 
 common halls : if the interests of trade or manu- 
 
206 LETTER XH. 
 
 factures, the deliberations of the house of com- 
 mons are intimately connected with those of the 
 great mercantile or manufacturing bodies. On 
 questions of philanthropy and humanity, the 
 legislative decisions amalgamate themselves as it 
 were with the labours of the various benevolent 
 societies which, without any impulse but those of 
 charity and religion, labour for the suppression 
 of the horrible slave-trade, the abolition of slavery 
 in the colonies, the reform of prisons and hospi- 
 tals, or the improvement of schools. In a word, 
 the parliament is only the prhiiKS inter pares among 
 those innumerable deliberative bodies, which con- 
 stitute the life and strength of the country. 
 
 This practical mode of viewing the action of 
 the legislative power in England is important, 
 and I recommend it to your attention, because 
 you will find in it the best solution of the some- 
 what idle question of the omnipotence of par- 
 liament. 
 
 If you suppose on one hand a legislative body 
 invested with all power, and on the other a nation 
 destitute of rights, without securities, without 
 the faculty of acting daily in the direction of its 
 
LETTER xri. 207 
 
 own affairs, and attributing a 'priori a supreme and 
 unrestricted power to the only political body, on 
 the composition of which it can exert any influence, 
 such a contrast undoubtedly appears shocking. 
 
 Immediately we figure to ourselves the electoral 
 system perverted by force or intrigue, and the 
 dearest interests of every citizen at the mercy of 
 an enslaved majority. A natural mistrust then 
 lays hold of every mind ; attempts are made to 
 bind the deputies by special mandates ; certain 
 rights are reserved, even though there are no means 
 of defending them; barriers are fixed round the 
 legislative body, which it is forbidden to pass, as 
 if such a prohibition were not illusory, and the 
 sovereignty did not in fact belong from necessity 
 to the legislative majority, supported by the phy- 
 sical strength of government; immutability is 
 claimed for certain constitutional articles, as if the 
 perpetual duration of a human institution were 
 compatable with the nature of man and of society. 
 And why ? because the nation feeling itself dis- 
 armed and powerless, has need to connect itself to 
 something stable, and, for want of vital and posi- 
 tive securities, superstitiously trusts itself to 
 
20B LETTER XII. 
 
 the dead letter of some declaration of principles 
 void of all sanction. 
 
 Suppose on the contrary, a nation managing 
 itself its affairs, always armed for the defence of 
 its liberties, watching day and night over its own 
 interests, speaking, acting, electing its magistrates, 
 interfering a thousand ways in the administration 
 of justice and government of the state, and ready 
 to make any sacrifice in support of political pri- 
 vileges, which are become as it were a necessary 
 element of the life of each citizen; the theme is 
 completely changed. The legislative body is no 
 longer a separate being distinct from the nation: 
 on the contrary it is a natural emanation from a 
 society, every member of which knows full well 
 what are the rights, of which he will not divest 
 himself at any price, and those which consequenly 
 he ought to respect in his fellow-citizens. The 
 omnipotence of parliament has then no longer any 
 thing alarming. 
 
 The nation, while acknowledging, that the 
 sovereignty must reside somewhere, and that it is 
 more advantageously placed in the hands of parlia- 
 meut than any where else, is far from abdicating 
 
LETTER XI r. 209 
 
 OH this account its inalienable prerogatives. If it 
 place itself in a state of guardianship, it is like 
 Henry IV. [of France] with the sword by its side; 
 and does not renounce the fundamental right of 
 resistance, which it is to be wished, as Mr. Fox 
 beautifully expressed himself, the people should 
 rarely remember, and kings never forget. 
 
 The sovereignty of the parliament, thus under- 
 stood, is in fact nothing but the sovereignty of the 
 people removed from the sphere of abstraction to 
 that of reality : or rather it is the terrestrial image 
 of that sovereignty of reason, to which men pay 
 homage, when, by a wholesome consent, they give 
 the force of law to the opinion of the majority, 
 provided this opinion be legitimated by under- 
 going the test of a free and public discussion. 
 
210 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 
 Of the composition of the House of Commons.' 
 
 So much has been written on the fantasticahiess 
 of the electoral system of England, that I shall not 
 abuse your time by entering into many particu- 
 lars respecting it. To attack it by general rea- 
 soning would be easy, in w^hich we should have 
 nothing to shun but common-place arguments. 
 To undertake its defence, and endeavour to give 
 ingenious theories the credit of results, which no 
 theory could presuppose, and no theory can re- 
 produce, is an enterprise, that may appear attrac- 
 tive to some minds, but is too closely allied to 
 the love of paradox. I shall satisfy myself there- 
 fore with taking things as they are, and giving 
 you some ideas respecting the composition of par- 
 liament, incomplete of course, but more conform- 
 
LETTER XII. 211 
 
 able to actual practice than those usually current 
 among us. 
 
 The English elections may be arranged in four 
 classes. 
 
 1. Counties. 
 
 2. Large towns, where the people vote. 
 
 3. Small towns, where the right of election be- 
 longs to a corporation. 
 
 4. Close boroughs, a term more general than 
 that of rotten boroughs. This is particularly ap- 
 plicable to places, where the electors have gradu- 
 ally disappeared, and the right of election has 
 become private property. 
 
 These different kinds of elections have not only 
 , distinct characters, but each class, taken sepa- 
 rately, offers more than one variety. 
 
 It is in the county elections, that all the lustre 
 of the aristocracy, and all the political energy of 
 the English people, are at once displayed. The 
 wealth and importance of the candidates, the num- 
 ber and quality of the electors, the publicity of 
 the poll, the active contest of parties, the solem- 
 nity of the triumph, all concur to give these 
 elections a chatacter eminently national. Accord- 
 
 p2 
 
212 LETTER XIII. 
 
 ingly, the honour of being the representative of 
 his county is the highest object of ambition to 
 the great landholder : and though the county 
 members have no prerogative in the House of 
 Commons, though their votes go for no more 
 than those of their colleagues, the nature of tlieir 
 election, and the large body of interests they 
 represent, give then-i a natural and legitimate 
 weight. This question or that may be decided 
 contrary to their opinions : but an administration, 
 that should be habitually at strife with the ma- 
 jority of the county members, could scarcely 
 maintain itself in place, even with a tolerable 
 numerical superiority of the other votes. 
 
 The enormous expenses of a county election 
 restrain the number of those who aspire to it.* 
 
 * The most considerable expense is that of the conveyance 
 of non-resident ehetors, whom t!»e candidates are frequently 
 obliged to bring; Ironi a considerable distance, and \vi;h much 
 tronl)le, to the place of contest. Olher expenses are the pub- 
 lication and disliibuiioii of hand-b.ils, advert sements in -the 
 newspapers, lees to toi.KSPllors an:l fittoineys, tlie erection of 
 luistnigs. i\ gs, cccl'adc^, muse, ftas's ath-r the election, &■:.', 
 to siiv nothing of gratuities, to %vhich, from motives of delicacy 
 I :>haii give no other name. (See oa this poiat several aiticles 
 
LETTER XIIT. 213 
 
 They are commonly the sons or relations of the 
 wealthiest peers of the realm, or gentlemen of 
 ancient families ia the county, and identified as 
 it were with its interests. The influence of these 
 gentlemen rests, perhaps, on a more solid basis 
 than that of the higher aristocracy. I have known 
 some obtain the most signal victories over com- 
 petitors, who were their superiors not only in 
 rank, but in landed property in the county itself, 
 yet did not stand so high in its confidence and 
 estimation. 
 
 If elections be to serious men one of the first 
 duties, and chief concerns of public life, to the 
 frivolous they are sometimes a matter of fashion, 
 like a box at the Opera, or a bet at Newmarket. 
 But such pretensions are generally scouted by 
 the good sense of the electors, and seldom end in 
 any thing but silly expense. 
 
 In general the expenses of an election are less 
 in proportion as the candidate is popular, and 
 
 in the Edinburgh RevieAy, particularly that of July, 1812 » 
 and the highly distinguished work of Cottu, on the admiuis" 
 tration of criminal justice in England.) 
 
214 LETTER XIII. 
 
 enjoys more personal esteem. In such cases 
 many electors pay out of their own pockets their 
 travelling and other expenses, which they would 
 consider they had aright to have defrayed for them 
 under other circumstances : and subscriptions are 
 formed in aid of the pecuniary resources of the 
 candidate, who is favoured by public opinion. 
 Thus Wilberforce long represented the county of 
 York; and thus in Westmorland, the hitherto 
 absolute dynasty of Lowther, will soon or late be 
 shaken by Brougham. 
 
 Contested elections are necessarily much more 
 expensive than those, where the candidates have 
 not to contend against an adversary : and the 
 expenses run higher, in proportion as the com- 
 petitor is more formidable. One of the last 
 elections of lord Milton for Yorkshire, did not 
 cost less than ^120,000 sterling. Such a sum, 
 no doubt, will astonish you : but yau will not 
 be less surprised at the manner in which it was 
 paid. 
 
 Of all the great names among the aristocracy 
 not one, perhaps, shines with so pure a lustre 
 as that of earl Fitzwilliam, the father of lord 
 
LETTER XIII. 215 
 
 Milton. Not a day of his long career has passed 
 unmarked by some act of justice, patriotism, or 
 bounty : not one in which he has not made the 
 most generous and enlightened use of his vast 
 fortune. The administration of lord Castlereagh 
 never, perhaps, incurred more blame in England, 
 than M^hen, setting at defiance all moral decorum, 
 he deprived earl Fitzwilliam of the lord-lieute- 
 nancy of Yorkshire. But let me return from 
 this digression. 
 
 The election of lord Milton having terminated 
 with glory, the expense remained to be paid. A 
 bill of £120,000 sterling was no trifle, even to the 
 greatest fortunes in England ; but the difficulty 
 was soon removed. While lord Fitzwilliam was 
 considering the means of discharging the debt 
 incurred by his son, his tenants, full of affection 
 for their old master, as well as attachment to 
 public liberty, of which his family is one of the 
 hereditary supports, met of their own accord, 
 and agreed unanimously to pay all the expenses 
 of the election. A subscription was immediately 
 opened, and the produce of it exceeding the 
 enormous debt they had taken on themselves. 
 
216 LETTER XIIT. 
 
 they employed the surplus in the erection of a 
 monument in Wentworth park, to commemorate 
 the elective victory in which they had concurred. 
 In return for this patriotic generosity, they de- 
 sired nothing, but that their rents should not be 
 raised during a certain number of years. This 
 condition, however, was superfluous with such a 
 man as earl Fitzwilliam ; for I am assured, that 
 he voluntarily reduced the rents of all his farms 
 one-third, the fall of grain having rendered them, 
 perhaps, too high. At the same time, to com- 
 pensate the loss of income he had imposed on 
 himself by this act of generosity, he constructed 
 a new canal, which is a benefit to the country, 
 while it is a source of wealth to himself. 
 
 After such instances, that the preponderance 
 of the English aristocracy may be attacked is pos- 
 sible, I will even say it is right ; but, at least, let 
 us not insult it by giving the same name to the 
 pretensions of petty squires, or the vanity of 
 courtiers. 
 
 Of the forty counties of England, each of which 
 sends two knights of the shire to the house of com- 
 mons, there are at present nine, the representa- 
 
LETTER XIII. 217 
 
 tives of which are ministerialists, five where they 
 are in opposition, and twenty-six in which the 
 influence of the opposite parties is so balanced, 
 that the representation is divided between the 
 whigs and tories. Thus of the eighty county 
 members, thirty-six vote with the opposition, and 
 forty-four with the ministry. This proportion, as 
 you perceive, is much more to the advantage of 
 opposition, than that of the whole number of 
 elections. Must we attribute this to the whigs 
 having a marked superiority of fortune, influence, 
 and talents, in the higher aristocracy? or must 
 we suppose, that the county elections faithfully 
 exhibit the opinions of the many ? This I dare not 
 venture to decide. 
 
 The twelve counties of Wales have each one 
 representative, nine of whom vote with the mini- 
 sters, and three with the opposition. 
 
 I say nothing of the Scotch elections, which 
 are illusory; or of those of unhappy Ireland, 
 which can scarcely be included within the pale of 
 the English constitution. 
 
 The county elections, as we have just seen, 
 pertain both to the agricultural interest, and to 
 
218 LETTER XIII. 
 
 the influence of the higher aristocracy. The 
 republican character, on the contrary, predomi- 
 nates in the elections in large towns; and this 
 on two accounts: first, because there is a natural 
 alliance between democratic opinions and the 
 interests of trade and industry; next, because the 
 population in general participates in elections of 
 this kind. In fact, in many of these the electoral 
 franchise is not confined to freeholders, but ex- 
 tends to every individual paying scot and lot, we 
 may even say, to all who do not derive succour 
 from the parish. In short, it is the people at 
 large exercising its rights as in Rome or Athens; 
 and by a contrast which we cannot sufficiently 
 remark, the same country and the same period 
 exhibit the unique combination of the democracy 
 of the ancient republics, the feudality of the. 
 middle ages, and the philosophical light of mo- 
 dern civilization. 
 
 It is in the public market-place, it is amid the 
 hootings of the mob, that the candidates appear 
 to gain the voters by the frank profession of their 
 political sentiments, captivate them by the charms 
 of eloquence, or hurry them away by the spirit 
 
LETTER XIII. 219 
 
 of their popular sallies. No one thinks it dero- 
 gatory, to conform to this custom. I shall not 
 speak to you of Fox, the man of the people, making 
 the voice of liberty resound in the ears of the 
 mob assembled at Westminster ; but Burke him- 
 self, Burke, the champion of aristocracy, de- 
 livered few speeches more memorable than that 
 he addressed to the people of Bristol assembled 
 at his election. 
 
 Sir Samuel Romilly is, I believe, the only 
 example of a candidate, who, at an election for 
 Westminster, was excused from mounting the 
 hustings, haranguing the people, and undergoing 
 the honour of being chaired, which succeeds the 
 election. This exception was doubly honourable ; 
 honourable to Sir Samuel, and honourable to the 
 electors, who had the sense, not to ascribe his 
 refusal to frigid pride, and on the contrary to 
 discern in the calm reserve of that great citizen a 
 truer and more energetic sentiment of the dignity 
 of the people, than in the eagerness with which 
 another might have come daily to solicit votes and 
 gain the plaudits of the mob. 
 
220 LETTER XIII. 
 
 It has often been remarked, how strange it is^ 
 that in a country like England, some of the prin- 
 cipal manufacturing towns are not represented in 
 parliament ; and that, while sorry boroughs with 
 a few hundreds of inhabitants send two members 
 to the house of commons, places of such im- 
 portance as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and 
 Sheffield, have not a right to elect one. In fact 
 this is an absurd anomaly, that cannot long hold 
 out against the unanimous reclamations of men of 
 sense. Such however in England itself is the 
 superiority of its agricultural wealth over that of 
 its trade and manufactures, that in 1814, under the 
 system of the income-tax, the revenue from the 
 profits of manufactures and commerce amounted 
 only to i;2,800,C00 sterling, while that from the 
 rent of land produced more than ^7,700,000. 
 
 It is consonant with equity therefore, that the 
 agricultural interest should have the same pre- 
 ponderance in the representation, as in the nation 
 itself: and though the race of country gentlemen 
 in England is not more friendly to the improve- 
 ment of institutions and the progress of knowledge 
 
LETTER XIII. 221 
 
 than elsewhere, we cannot deny, that it has some 
 riglit to form the basis of the house of commons. 
 Of this class, as the representative of the status 
 quOy the partisans of innovation ought to endeavour 
 to make proselytes ; and any measure, that should 
 pass without having been comprehended and 
 adopted by the bulk of the landed proprietors, 
 would want the true conditions of strength and 
 stability. 
 
222 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 
 Continuation of the same Subject. 
 
 My last letter treated of the public and popular 
 elections of counties and large towns. It remains 
 for me now to speak of the last two classes of elec- 
 tions I mentioned before, those of towns under 
 the influence of a body corporate, and of close 
 boroughs at the disposal of a family or an in- 
 dividual. 
 
 This distinction, though founded to speak 
 generally, is not rigorously accurate. Nothing 
 in England is reducible to a strictly systematic 
 classification. I was complaining one day to a 
 wit of the numberless irregularities in the English 
 language. — "You are mistaken," said he plea- 
 santly; *' our tongue is very regular; but there 
 is a particular rule for each word."^ — What is true 
 
LETTER XIV. 223 
 
 of the language, is not less so of the different facts 
 of the social and political order. Though they 
 are connected together by certain common cha- 
 racters, there are scarcely any but must be 
 studied separately. 
 
 Thus many a town may be quoted, where the 
 election interest is divided between a man of 
 wealth and a little borough aristocracy, which 
 sells him its votes by a sort of tacit and perma- 
 nent agreement. In this number are most of the 
 forty -four boroughs of Cornwall, which have long 
 been objects of censure to lawyers and of plea- 
 santry to men of wit, and have excited the com- 
 plaints of the people of the county itself, one of 
 the proudest and most independent in England. 
 
 Another town, which contains several hundred 
 voters, and where the right of voting belongs in- 
 discriminately to all who pay scot and lot, is 
 equally a close borough, because particular cir- 
 cumstances render it absolutely dependant on 
 some great proprietor. Another, on the contrary, 
 where the right of election is confined to a small 
 •body corporate, acknowledges no influence but 
 
224 LETTER XIV. 
 
 that of money, and the representation is accessible 
 to any one who will pay its price. 
 
 It is incontestably in the elections of little 
 towns, that corruption is most frequent, I would 
 almost say the most frank. One of the friends of 
 Sheridan was desirous he should be a candidate 
 for the city of Hereford, if I remember right. He 
 went from house to house to engage the promise 
 of votes, and took all the preparatory steps of the 
 canvass. After boasting of the talents of his 
 illustrious friend, his political principles, and 
 above all his attachment to parliamentary reform : 
 *' Ay, sir," said one of the electors interrupting 
 him, ** Mr. Sheridan is a fine man. Yes, cer- 
 tainly, the parliament stands in need of reform ; 
 nobody knows it better than we do. Of late, 
 would you believe it ? the gentlemen of the house 
 of commons are grown so stingy, that we poor 
 burgesses will soon be unable to live, and an 
 honest elector will be obliged to give his vote 
 for a morsel of bread." 
 
 But how is it, you will perhaps ask, that such 
 an open system of corruption can maintain its 
 ground, in spite of the laws made to suppress it. 
 
LEtTER XIV. 2'16 
 
 \Vhere publicity bears sway, and ia the face of 
 public opinion, on other points so strict? To this 
 I have nothing to answer, but that it is one incon- 
 gruity among a thousand ; and that, even among 
 a people farthest advanced in the career of liberty, 
 the progress of morality is much slower in the 
 political system, than in the affairs of private 
 life. 
 
 A determined advocate of things as they are 
 would perhaps add, it is of little importance that 
 elections are venal, so long as no person com- 
 plains, and the choice falls on men worthy of a 
 seat in parliament : that besides, whenever a 
 complaint is made, and the corruption proved, 
 the house expels the member complained of, 
 and the guilty borough is punished by being de- 
 prived of its franchise. 
 
 We have seen in fact two recent instances of 
 this merited chastisement. But such a process, 
 conducted before judges, many of whom have 
 titles not more legitimate than those of the party 
 accused, remains not the less very strange. 
 
 Boroughs governed by the influence of an in- 
 
226 LETTER XIV. 
 
 dividual, or of a body of men, may be classed 
 under three heads. 
 
 1. Those that are to be sold to the best 
 bidder. 
 
 2. Those that are saleable, but only to can- 
 didates of the same political party as the seller. 
 
 3. Those which men of large possessions be- 
 stow gratuitously on their relations, their friends, 
 or men of talents, who may give a lustre t^9 their 
 cause. 
 
 You will, perhaps, be well pleased on this 
 occasion, to penetrate a little with me into the 
 secrets of ministerial tactics. 
 
 Among the proprietors of boroughs there are 
 several, who, being connected with government 
 by interest or opinion, come and offer it the votes 
 it possesses, either gratuitously, or in exchange for 
 a certain number of places to be given to the per- 
 sons they shall recommend, or for a sum of money 
 inferior to what they would have a right to demand 
 from any other purchaser. You will easily sup- 
 pose, that ministers eagerly embrace and solicit 
 such proposals. This done, they begin by 
 securing a gratuitous return to the house of 
 
LETTER XTV. 227 
 
 <?ommons for themselves, and the actors that are 
 to figure in their political drama : then they sell 
 at a profit to the rich of their party the remainder 
 of the boroughs they have engrossed, and pur- 
 chase others with the profits accruing from 
 these. 
 
 George III. I am assured, never failed to con- 
 tribute from his privy purse some thousands 
 sterling, to support this little electioneering trade. 
 He only abstained from it in 1806, under the mi- 
 nistry of Mr. Fox ; considering this, no doubt, a 
 good opportunity to make a saving, and deeming 
 it quite sufficient to resign himself into the hands 
 of ministers who were friends to liberty, without 
 endeavouring to increase their influence. 
 
 I anticipate from you a very natural objection. 
 You speak, you will say, of proprietors of bo- 
 roughs, of men who sell, who buy, and who give 
 away seats in parliament. But however illusory 
 such elections may be, the voters are still human 
 beings, endowed with understanding and free 
 will. Does it never occur, that they have an 
 opinion, a will of their own, and reject the can- 
 didates attempted to be imposed on them? 
 
 q2 
 
228 LETTER XIV. 
 
 In fact it does sometimes happen, though rarely. 
 It is the same with electioneering influence as 
 with the aristocratic influence in general : long 
 custom has rendered it sacred, and the English 
 voluntarily submit to it ; but it is solely on con- 
 dition, that no infringement of certain rights or 
 certain sentiments of moral decorum takes place. 
 If the line of what appears to them legitimate be 
 over-stepped, all their haughtiness, and all their 
 native independence, reappear. 
 
 I could mention to you a borough, situate in 
 the very park of a great lord, all the houses of 
 which belong to him, and all the voters of which, 
 though almost absolutely dependant on him, 
 nevertheless shook off the yoke of his influence, 
 because they disapproved his principles and con- 
 duct. These same voters were brought under 
 allegiance to his successor by their natural incli- 
 nation for his talents and virtues. Other great 
 lords, on the contrary, will not transmit to their 
 heirs the immense patronage, which is at present 
 submissive to all their political desires. 
 
 You perceive, then, it would be erroneous to 
 pass too absolute a judgment on the question of 
 
LETTER XIV. 229 
 
 close boroughs. This question besides is subject, 
 like all others, to the empire of public opinion. 
 One borough would obtain general approbation 
 by an endeavour to shake off the yoke : another, 
 on the contrary, would incur blame, and its 
 attempts would be considered as a species of 
 rebellion. The following exemplifies this. 
 . The city of Peterborough is one of those, where 
 the right of voting belongs to all the inhabitants 
 paying scot and lot. It has six or seven hundred 
 electors, consequently more than many depart- 
 ments in France : yet it is reckoned among the 
 boroughs of earl Fitzwilliam, either because it is 
 situate amid his domains, and most of the houses 
 belong to him ; or because a long series of acts 
 of benevolence and generosity have attached it to 
 the Wentworth family. At the last election Mr. 
 Scarlett was the candidate presented by lord 
 Fitzwilliam to the electors of Peterborough. 
 Such a choice, the glory of the English bar, 
 might be supposed to have met unanimous ac- 
 ceptance : however, contrary to all expectation, 
 an opposition was declared. Some persons un- 
 dertook to bring forward as a competitor to Mr. 
 
230 LETTER XIV, 
 
 Scarlett an obscure individual, whose talfehts and 
 character were a thousand degrees below com- 
 parison with his. Against such an adversary 
 victory was not difficult : nevertheless, a- sort of 
 contest took place, and Mr. Scarlett deemed it 
 necessary to harangue the people from the- 
 hustings. 
 
 The election ended, and the effervescence sub- 
 sided; the inhabitants of Peterborough, particu- 
 larly those who had stood most prominent in 
 opposition, were not without uneasiness. What 
 would earl Fitzwilliam do ? Would he raise their 
 rents? Would he deprive the city of this or that 
 gratuitous concession? In short, what vengeance 
 would he take on this insurrection? A sentiment- 
 of vengeance could not enter a mind so noble as^ 
 that of earl Fitzwilliam. However, the mainte- 
 nance of his influence in elections appeared to 
 him of too great importance, for him to dispense 
 with testifying his dissatisfaction. Accordingly 
 he increased, by a few pence, the tolls of a canal 
 near the city, which he had the generosity to 
 keep before at a rate much lower than- that^ of^ 
 other canals; and this trifling increase of rates^ 
 
LETTER XIV. 
 
 231 
 
 which would never perhaps have taken place but 
 for the circumstance of his election, added to his 
 income more than eight thousand a year. Scarcely 
 was the resolution of lord Fitzwilliam known, 
 when the city sent a deputation to him, to intreat 
 him to revoke it: but he would not consent. 
 '* Gentlemen," said he to the deputies, " in your 
 attempt to reject the illustrious candidate I sent 
 to you, you exercised an incontestable right, 
 which I am the first to acknowledge. In raising' 
 the tolls of my canal, I, in my turn, avail myself 
 of a legitimate power. As long as we are' on a 
 footing of mutual good will, I shall endeavour not 
 to be in yonr debt with respect to kind offices : 
 but if you intrench yourselves oh the strict ground 
 of right, do not be surprised at my following your 
 example!" 
 
 That the aristocratic preponderance in English 
 elections is exorbitant, I believe admits of no dis- 
 piite. It is certain, that even in the present day 
 the' house of commons is named by an electoral 
 body, scarcely exceeding eight thousand persons, 
 most of whoni are little less than absolutely de- 
 pendant on about a hundred and fifty families, 
 
5l32 LETTER XIV. 
 
 either of the ministerial or opposition party. But 
 it is not less certain, that the whole number of 
 active citizens is more considerable in England, 
 than in any other country in Europe ; that all 
 classes of the people participate in the movement, 
 interest, animation, to which the free exercise of 
 civic rights gives birth ; and that at the solemn 
 period of elections, every mind is agitated, every 
 heart beats for the triumph of its cause. How is 
 this apparent contradiction to be explained, unless 
 by two fundamental reasons, the publicity of 
 votes, and the diversity of modes of election ? 
 
 This diversity, far from appearing an inconve- 
 nience in my eyes, is, on the contrary, 1 conceive, 
 the true remedy of the defects, with which the 
 election system in England may be reproached. 
 I see in it not only a faithful image of all the con- 
 trasts of the social order, of which I have so 
 frequently spoken, but find a firm assurance, that 
 no man, truly worthy of a seat in the house, will 
 ever be excluded from it. This is a truth too 
 little known to those, who have not well studied 
 the facts. They see capriciousness, injustice, cor- 
 ruption, in the election system now in vigour: 
 
LETTER XIV. 233 
 
 they hear it said, that a reform is demanded, and 
 naturally enough imagine, that a number of men, 
 whom the wishes of their fellow-citizens call to 
 parliament, are excluded from it by the faults of 
 the system. No such thing. It may not only be 
 said, that the house of commons represents, in a 
 tolerably equitable manner, the opinions of the 
 various parties ; but I do not hesitate to affirm, 
 that every English citizen, whose talents and 
 knowledge deserve a place in parliament, is 
 certain of obtaining it, if it be his desire, and of 
 preserving it, as long as he continues to render 
 himself worthy of the public esteem. 
 
 The interests of agriculture, as well as those of 
 commerce and manufactures, old habits, as well as 
 new ideas, are sure of finding organs there. The 
 defender of aristocratic traditions, the ardent 
 friend of liberal innovations, the man of confined 
 ideas, whose activity is concentrated on a single 
 object, the philosophical politician, whose impar- 
 tial eye embraces at once all the interests of the 
 community, all have their place marked before- 
 hand in the house to be elected. 
 
 America itself, the wise and free America, has 
 
ndt' th6 SEtiiie securities in this respect as England".' 
 In fact, the necessary consequence of a uniform ' 
 systerfi of elections, ev^n when founded on the 
 rrfcJst rational bases, is to give the majority, not 
 merely its due preponderaiice, but absolute power. 
 A^d it is easy to conceive, how a momentary 
 abfe'rratiori'dr popular opinion is as capable as a 
 MacMaVelian contrivance in the measures of 
 gorernment, to exclude from the nation^ reptfe- 
 setitation those men, the highest df all inintelldc- 
 tiial tank, tb whom the search of a truth is as mucli ' 
 a natural want as a duty, and v/.hose minds are as 
 superior to popular passions as to the seductions 
 of auth'Ority. Now meti of this description, such 
 as^re-c'onimencitig their' ciareer, as well as those 
 Whose natnes'are already illustrious, find in the 
 gtedii' diversity' of election's; atid ih th6 influence 
 of 'ail enlightened aristocracy, a cfertainty of being' 
 elected. 
 
 It was through this influence, that most of the 
 great men of Eiiglaiid ' first gained entrance into 
 pafHam^nt. Powfetful friends, early di^sceirhing 
 talents yet unknoWfv to 'the piiblid, o^eiied for 
 thbni a catefer, which perhaps' would long have 
 
LETTEIl XIV. 235 
 
 remained closed to them, had they been obliged 
 to wait till their reputation had required the 
 suffrages of their fellow-citizens. It is through the 
 same influence, that in the present day the first 
 orators of the opposition- — Mackintosh, Brougham, 
 Scarlett, Abercromby, &c. are seated in the house 
 of commons ; and we may even maintain, without 
 falling into paradox, that, with regard to the gene- 
 ral weal of England, it is better they should thus' 
 obtain seats, than by mearts of a county election 
 or that of' a large town. It is by meditation, or 
 by eloquence, that men of superior talents are 
 called to serve their country; and daily intercourse 
 with too large a number of constituents would 
 consume much valuable time, which interests- of ^ 
 a Higher order claim. These affairs of detail 
 are more advantageously placed in the hands 
 of' great landholders, who, in the management 
 of their private fortunes, are brought into habitual 
 intercourse with a number of citizens, with whose 
 interests, wishes, and habits,- they th»s become • 
 acquainted. 
 
 Let us not forget, here, an essential remark : it> 
 is> that the best champions of ^the people's cause. 
 
235 LETTER XIV. 
 
 the true interpreters of their sentiments, are not 
 members taken from among themselves, but men 
 who, independent both by their fortunes and their 
 station in society, feel themselves animated with 
 a generous ardour to defend the rights of the 
 weak, and a lively sympathy for the sufferings of 
 the poor. Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Bennet, men 
 sprung from the first families in England, are 
 those who raise their voices most loudly in de- 
 fence of the labouring classes ; who, in the midst 
 of the house of commons, protect poor journeymen 
 against the severity of an absolute master, and 
 spread even over poor chimney-sweepers the om- 
 nipotent aegis of parliament. Would a member 
 taken from the lower ranks of society have equal 
 weight, even though sent to the house by the 
 freest election ? Assuredly not. 
 
 In this respect, Sweden furnishes a curious 
 example. The peasants, as is well known, there 
 form a separate order in the national representa- 
 tion, and their deputies to the diet must be chosen 
 from among themselves. What is the conse- 
 quence? Being destitute of experience in busi- 
 ness, and the talent of public speaking, their 
 
LETTLII XIV. 237 
 
 delegates feel themselves in some measure obliged 
 to vote in concert with the nobles, and allow 
 themselves to be guided by their influence; while 
 wealthy and enlightened deputies would secure 
 to the deliberations of their order the actual inde- 
 pendence which they want. 
 
 What is of importance to the people is, not the 
 being represented in this or that numerical pro- 
 portion, or by men more or less approximating 
 the class by which they are elected, but that its 
 voice should be heard : it is especially, that some 
 democratic elections, by uniting large bodies of 
 people at a single point, should make them sen- 
 sible of their strength, and remind their governors 
 that they are not to be braved by them with 
 impunity. As to the greater or smaller number 
 of meetings of this kind, the question is of 
 secondary consideration. The salutary move- 
 ment of a Westminster election is not confined to 
 the precincts of the metropolis ; all the people of 
 Great Britain feel its vibration. 
 
 Do not, on this account, impute to me, I request, 
 the intention of defending the principle of the 
 preponderance of the aristocratic element in the 
 
238 LETTER XIV. 
 
 English elections : nothing is farther from my 
 thoughts. But, taking things as they are, it is 
 just to exhibit the advantages as well as the 
 inconveniences ; and it is prudent to be on out 
 guard against the general positions, in some 
 measure trite, that abound on the other side of 
 the question. 
 
 You will probably be rather curious to know in 
 what proportion the opposite opinions are repre- 
 sented in such an irregular system of elections. 
 The following is a picture of it, according to the 
 present composition of the house of commons. 
 You will bear in mind, however, that a calculation 
 of this kind, even though its data are just, is not 
 susceptible of mathematical precision ; and also 
 that it is antecedent to the late changes in the 
 ministry. 
 
 At present, in fact, any classification of the 
 house of commons would be in some measure im- 
 possible. Several shades are confounded together; 
 several party distinctions are effaced ; and a cir- 
 cumstance, which is very honourable to the cha- 
 racter of the whigs, is the readiness with which 
 they have supported the administration by their 
 
LETTER XIV. 339 
 
 votes, as soon as they found it disposed toadppt, 
 in economical questions particularly, a course 
 more conformable to the interests of their coun- 
 try, as well as to the general principles gdf reason. 
 
 Of the six hundred an^ j&fty-eight njieipi^ers 
 that compose the house of commons, about ^\y,9 
 hundred vote habitually with the opposition : the 
 rest follow the ministers, including fifteen or 
 twenty neutrals, who vote sometimes on one side, 
 sometimes on the other, according to their con- 
 viction, but who most commonly support the 
 measures of administration. 
 
 Now if we analyse the different kinds of elec- 
 tion, we shall see, that, of the ninety-two county 
 members of England and Wales, fifty-eight belong 
 to the ministerial party, and forty-two to the op- 
 position.* 
 
 The cities and towns send four hundred an(J 
 twenty-one members, of whom a hundred and 
 twenty-one vote with the opposition. 
 
 * This is evidently a mistake. The numbers that agree 
 most nearly with the table following are fifty-three and thirty- 
 nine. Tr. 
 
240 LITTER XIY. 
 
 The Scotch elections give the ministry thirty- 
 five votes, and the opposition only ten. 
 
 Lastly, of the hundred Irish members, no less 
 than seventy-nine are under ministerial influence. 
 
 On reducing these different fractions to one 
 denominator, we find the following proportions • 
 
 Elections. Opposition. Ministry. 
 
 County, in England alone - 45 hundredths. 55 hundredths. 
 
 Do. in England and Wales- 42 58 
 
 Cities and Towns in Do. - 31 69 
 
 Scotch ------- 22 78 
 
 Irish ------- 21 79 
 
 In this scale of proportions you will remark, 
 no doubt, that the ratio the opposition party 
 bears to that of the ministers diminishes rapidly, 
 in proportion as the elections become more illu- 
 sory. 
 
 Two calculations, made by lord John Russel 
 and viscount Milton, show, that, if the towns be 
 classed according to their population, the number 
 of ministerial members is in the inverse ratio of 
 that of the electors ; so that in boroughs, with 
 fewer than five hundred inhabitants, the proper- 
 
LETTER XrV. 
 
 241 
 
 tion of the ministerial members to the opposition 
 is as nineteen to one ; while in towns, with more 
 than five thousand, it is only three to five. 
 
 These calculations approach the truth : but I 
 believe we should be wrong in concluding, that a 
 great increase of the whig party in the house of 
 commons would immediately result from a re- 
 form of parliament. This reform, no doubt, would 
 become favourable to the cause of liberty ; but it 
 would operate rather by modifying the connection 
 of the members with the nation, than by altering 
 the composition of the house itself. This very 
 simple idea I recommend to your sagacity, be- 
 cause it appears to me to include the true gist of 
 the question. 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 
 Of Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 It is a fact worthy of observation, that almost all 
 the great statesmen of England have been more or 
 less partisans of a reform of parliament. Windham 
 is, I believe, the only one, who has declared for the 
 pure and simple maintenance of the existing insti- 
 tutions, or rather customs, and boldly defended 
 the possession of close boroughs as a right of pro- 
 perty. Burke has varied in the sentiments he has 
 professed on this point. However, without 
 recurring to the time of the republic, we find lord 
 Clarendon, lord Chatham, Pitt, Fox, &c., calling 
 for a change of the system of election at different 
 periods, and in different degrees. And since, 
 after its revival at the restoration, this system has 
 remained unshaken by such weighty authorities 
 
LETTER XV. 243 
 
 and great talents, it is to be presumed, its roots 
 have penetrated much deeper, than is commonly 
 supposed. 
 
 Accordingly we find the question of parliament- 
 ary reform agitated with much noise, whenever 
 any extraordinary circumstance causes the people 
 to experience a general or partial inconvenience, 
 and sink into oblivion as soon as prosperity is 
 restored. And among those whom it habitually 
 occupies, there is scarcely any medium between 
 the Utopian schemes of demagogues, and modifi- 
 cations so timid as scarcely to merit the name of 
 reform: a certain proof, that men's ideas and 
 wishes have nothing yet well settled in this 
 respect. 
 
 You have often heard speak of radicals, of their 
 influence on the minds of the populace, and of the 
 efforts of government to suppress them; and you 
 may have fancied alternately the monarchy en- 
 dangered by their success, or liberty threatened 
 by the measures taken on their account. 
 
 This requires explanation. A radical reform of 
 parliament has advocates of two very different 
 kinds. One of these consists of subaltern orators, 
 
 11 2 
 
244 LETTER XV. 
 
 who may acquire some importance by rousing the 
 passions in times of trouble or discontent; but 
 whose ambition, in a period of domestic tran- 
 quillity, is confined to hawking about some repub- 
 lican common-places, from one popular meeting 
 to another ; and to gathering applause by a coarse 
 but sometimes vivid and faithful delineation of the 
 abuses of government. I have given you a speci- 
 men in Cobbett, whose talents as a writer leave 
 him without an e";jual. Hunt and his acolytes, 
 those who act with sincerity as well as those who 
 may be suspected of having a secret understanding 
 with administration, do not deserve our stopping 
 to discuss their opinions. 
 
 Non raggionam di lor, ma guarda e passu 
 But there is another class of radical reformers 
 of a very different reach of mind, of quite another 
 degree of iaiportance, and whose influence I have 
 no hesitation in believing to be progressive. I 
 speak here of the new political school of Bentham, 
 a school that includes well-informed politicians, 
 accurate financiers, economists of the first order, 
 and which proceeding on principles clearly defined, 
 possesses the advantage over its antagonists, that 
 
LETTEH XV. 245 
 
 a complete theory, even when erroneous, has over 
 an exposition of solitary facts connected by no 
 system. 
 
 The reputation of Bentham as a lawyer does not 
 belong exclusively to England: the Continent may 
 claim its share; for such a translator as Dumont is 
 in some measure a second inventor. But what is 
 not generally known is, that Bentham, after having 
 applied in his youth the prodigious analytical 
 powers of his mind to demonstrations of jurispru- 
 dence, increasing in republican ardour at a time 
 of life, when the ideas of order naturally pre- 
 dominate over sentiments of liberty, has become 
 in his old age the head, we may almost say the 
 idol, of a political sect. The fundamental dogma 
 of this sect is self-interest, sometimes disguised 
 under the name of the principle of utility; and aims 
 at nothing less than a uniform remoulding of the 
 political system, as well as of civil and criminal 
 law, throughout the whole world. 
 
 In a correspondence like ours I cannot think of 
 dicussing philosophically the moral principles, on 
 which the disciples of Bentham rest their theory. 
 Even were ray powers equal to the task, this is 
 
246 LETTER XV. 
 
 not the place to attempt it : but T think I may run 
 over with you in a few words the series of deduc- 
 tions, by which they arrive at a reform of the elec- 
 tion system in England. 
 
 The first principle, say they, on which all 
 society rests, is, that the actions of men are con- 
 formable to their interests. The satisfaction of 
 these interests is the motive, that sets them to 
 work. 
 
 That society then is the happiest, where every 
 man enjoys the greatest possible portion of the 
 produce of his labour. But as every man, if left to 
 himself, pursues his own interests at the expense 
 of those of his fellows, till he is stopped by an 
 opposite interest, it is necessary to organize a 
 power capable of preventing the interests of indi- 
 viduals from trenching on the general interests, or, 
 in other words, of securing the greatest happiness 
 to the largest number. 
 
 Such is the object of governments. The only 
 perfect government, if it were practicable, would 
 be a pure democracy, because in this case, the 
 whole society would watch over the protection of 
 its own interests. But as in a community, every 
 
LETTER XV. 247 
 
 member of which would be constantly occupied 
 with the care of the interests of all, no one could 
 work, or enjoy the fruit of his labour, pure de- 
 mocracy would be inconsistent with the very 
 end, for which men unite in society. 
 
 Hence the community is under the necessity 
 of delegating its powers. 
 
 But, as soon as any powers whatever are dele- 
 gated to a given portion of the community, this 
 portion immediately feels desires and interests 
 contrary to those of the rest of the citizens, who 
 must consequently place themselves in a state to 
 resist them. 
 
 Here an unanswerable objection presents itself. 
 If it be necessary, for the happiness of society, 
 that it should assume a state of permanent re- 
 sistance to the minority invested with the power 
 of governing it ; this resistance of all against some 
 will be so much the easier, and the condition of 
 the society so much the better, in proportion as 
 the governing minority is less numerous. An 
 oligarchy then is better than an aristocracy ; and 
 an absolute monarchy is still preferable, because 
 in this case, the interests will have to contend 
 
248 LETTER XV. 
 
 only against those of an individual. This fine 
 conclusion, at which Hobbes had already arrived, 
 -cannot fail of seeming strange to politicians, v^^ho 
 profess, not without cause, an ardent love for 
 liberty ; accordingly they do not rest there, while 
 admitting that it is a legitimate deduction from 
 their premises. 
 
 After having shown by arguments easily to be 
 imagined, how pure democracy, aristocracy, and 
 monarchy, are equally impossible to be realised ; 
 they inquire, whether a combination of these 
 three forms of government be practicable, and 
 still decide in the negative : for, if their powers 
 be equal, they will be in a state of warfare; if 
 unequal, the weaker will soon be annihilated by 
 the stronger, according to the consolatory axiom, 
 that every man, when not restrained by superior 
 force, will pursue indefinitely the accomplish- 
 ment of his desires, to the detriment of all his 
 fellows. 
 
 The balance of powers then is merely a chime- 
 rical idea; and it is not true, that, as has been 
 asserted, the English constitution is a happy 
 mixture of the three forms of government. 
 
LETTER XV. 249 
 
 But if it be impossible to place the powers in a 
 state of equilibrium, the community can at least 
 restrain them within certain limits ; and it is the 
 representative government, that furnishes a solu- 
 tion of the problem. 
 
 The elective assembly however, from its form- 
 ing a distinct body in the nation alone, will acquire 
 ipso facto desires and interests different from those 
 of the generality of citizens. This is a great evil 
 no doubt; but, being charged with resisting other 
 powerful minorities, it must be invested with 
 powers sufficient to render this resistance effica- 
 cious. 
 
 As the intensity of the powers of the repre- 
 sentative body cannot be diminished, their dura- 
 tion at least should be shortened, and it should be 
 frequently purified at the fountain-head of a de- 
 mocratic election, in order to maintain as much 
 uniformity as possible between the interests of 
 the deputies and those of their constituents. 
 
 Parliaments then should be annual. 
 
 But here we have a new difficulty. If the 
 same persons be habitually re-chosen, they will 
 soon form an aristocracy in fact, the interests 
 
250 LETTER XV. 
 
 of which will be in opposition to those of the 
 Gommunity. If, on the contrary, the choice be 
 restricted to fresh members, as the constitution 
 of 1791 decreed with us, these men will be with- 
 out any experience in affairs, and the resisting 
 body will thus find itself deprived of the necessary 
 strength . 
 
 In this dilemma, practical good sense, of which 
 no theory can wholly divest English citizens, 
 turns the balance, and the decision is made in 
 favour of re- eligibility. 
 
 But by whom shall the members of the resisting 
 body be chosen? As this body ought as far as 
 possible to have the same interests as the com- 
 munity, it is evident, that it should not be elected 
 by a minority, since every minority has interests 
 different from those of the whole of the citizens. 
 They must be chosen therefore either by the 
 community itself, or by electors who have the 
 same interests as the community ; that is to say, 
 at all events by a majority of the citizens. 
 
 Here, after having so frequently maintained, 
 that the minority always seeks to oppress the 
 majority, it is not attempted positively to deny. 
 
LETTER XV. 251 
 
 that the majority may also endeavour to oppress 
 the less numerous party. This objection is par- 
 ried in the following manner. 
 
 Supposing the majority to constitute alone the 
 governing body, and to be very superior in num- 
 ber to the minority, we find by a calculation 
 reduced to its simplest elements, that the interest 
 this majority may have in the establishment of an 
 oppressive system would represent with respect 
 to each of its members something less than the 
 advantage of oppressing a single individual. If 
 the majority were double the number of the 
 minority, the same interest would represent for 
 each acting citizen only half the pleasure of op- 
 pressing one of his fellows : and in this case, the 
 benefits of a good government, the enjoyment of 
 which is common to all, would exceed for the 
 members of the majority the advantages of the 
 abuses, which they could exclusively enjoy. 
 
 This is the argument in all its simplicity. That 
 I might not misrepresent it, I have employed 
 almost literally the words of the official organs of 
 the new sect; but you will not require me to 
 refute it. 
 
252 LETTER XV. 
 
 In reasoning according to the system of the 
 sovereignty of the people, the empire of the 
 majority is only the expression of an indisputable 
 fact, that of the force of numbers ; and as this 
 system acknowledges in every citizen impre- 
 scriptable rights, inherent in the very nature of 
 man, the remedy against the attempts, that the 
 majority might make on these rights, is found in 
 the power left to the minority of separating itself, 
 and forming a new community. 
 
 When we trace the sovereignty to its true 
 origin, when we derive it from the eternal source 
 of reason and justice, the submission of all to 
 the laws voted by the majority is a homage paid 
 to the principle of the sovereignty itself: it pre- 
 supposes a free discussion, in which sound argu- 
 ments have prevailed over unsound. 
 
 But in an absolute system of political material- 
 ism, where it is laid down as a principle, that 
 every man will always do to his fellows all the 
 evil, that he is not prevented from doing ; where 
 the corruption of human nature, instead of being 
 a motive of confusion, and of humility before 
 God, becomes the very basis, on which the edifice 
 
LETTER XV. 253 
 
 of society is attempted to be erected ; in a sys- 
 tem, in short, of which self-interest is the funda- 
 mental dogma ; on what grounds can any mino- 
 rity be required, to submit to the will of the 
 greater number? To what law shall we appeal 
 to compel them? Is it to the law of nature? 
 This is denied. Is it to the moral law ? The 
 foundations of this are sapped. Is it to the law 
 of religion ? This is put out of court by a silence 
 more polite than respectful. 
 
 We will not enter into this discussion, how- 
 ever, but return to the composition of the elect- 
 ing body. 
 
 Here the school is divided. The boldest and 
 most consistent claim universal suffrage, without 
 excepting even women. Others, more timid, or. 
 more friendly to practical ideas, lay some restric- 
 tions on this principle. They begin by excluding 
 women, and men under twenty-one years of age, 
 gratuitously assuming, that their interests cannot 
 differ from those of their husbands and parents. 
 Some would even have no objection, to restrain 
 the right of voting to men of forty, taking it for 
 granted, still more gratuitously, that these men, 
 
254 LETTER XV. 
 
 having both parents and children, would pass no 
 laws, but such as were beneficial to the whole 
 community, above as well as below their own 
 age. Others again, and among these is the 
 leader of the sect himself, admit no citizens to 
 the exercise of political rights, except such as 
 can read and write : but the arguments on which 
 they found their opinion, and to which I should 
 willingly accede, are not less inconsistent with 
 their fundamental principles. With regard to 
 pecuniary conditions, these they pretty generally 
 agree to reject; on the grounds, that rating the 
 qualification high would establish an aristocracy, 
 and rating it very low would afford no more secu- 
 rity than leaving it out of the question. 
 
 Such are the outlines of the system. You will 
 perceive better than myself, how easy it would 
 be, to combat it by attacking, as we ought, the 
 moral principle on which it rests. But the task 
 becomes more difficult, if we admit the premises, 
 and dispute only the conclusions from them. 
 Hence the advantage, that writers of the school 
 of Bentham often have over those English poli- 
 ticians, who, admitting the principle of utility, 
 
LETTER XV. 255 
 
 defend the constitution of their country as con- 
 ducive to the interests of the people. 
 
 We agree, say they, that the benefit of the 
 majority is the end of every political system : 
 but we maintain, that the present state of things 
 is more advantageous to them, than' that which 
 would result from universal suffrage. You are 
 inconsistent, answer the disciples of Bentham: 
 for, if it be true, that the institutions you defend 
 are more useful to the majority, the majority 
 would not fail, to will their continuance : what, 
 then, have you to fear from a democratic elec- 
 tion? If you refuse this test, may we not justly 
 conclude, either that you deceive yourselves, or 
 that you are not sincere ? This reasoning is cer- 
 tainly not without weight : but why ? Because 
 the opponents of the doctrine of Bentham do not 
 go so far back as they ought, to combat it : and 
 that, according to the eternal laws of the human 
 mind, a system, even though erroneous, when it 
 forms a collective whole, must be victorious over 
 the absence of system. 
 
 The example of the United States is the habi- 
 tual answer of Bentham and his disciples to 
 
256 LETTER XV. 
 
 those, who, from whatever motive, reject their 
 innovations as dangerous or impracticable. But 
 have they any right to rely on this example ? 
 This I am the less disposed to admit, the more I 
 respect and admire the United States. 
 
 Free, powerful, and happy, America concerns 
 itself little about political theories. Democracy 
 is its natural element: it enjoys liberty undis- 
 puted, as the air it breathes, as the vast territory 
 that offers an unbounded career to the courageous 
 activity of its children. But we must not forget, 
 that, prepared for freedom by the manners and 
 laws of England, when it broke the thread that 
 united it to the metropolis, it had not to remould 
 its social organization according to this or that phi- 
 losophical principle. When it claimed indepen- 
 dance, when it acquired it by a struggle unpa- 
 ralleled in the annals of the world, the dry dogma 
 of utility was not its standard ; a dogma, that 
 will never, I fear, make men heroes. It was in 
 the name of the rights of man it fought : it was 
 the principle of the sovereignty of the people, 
 that presided over its federal organization: in 
 short, its political doctrines are the same, as were 
 
LETTER XV. 267 
 
 subsequently adopted by the constitutional 
 assembly. And, though I think them vulnerable 
 in more points than one, God forbid that I should 
 confound them with the political Epicureanism, 
 of which I have exhibited to you a few features. 
 
 The school of Bentham, therefore, has no right 
 to quote the authority of the United States in 
 support of its system : but in as much as it re- 
 commends the example of America to the atten- 
 tion of legislators and statesmen, and combats 
 the lamentable prejudices on this point, that are 
 still so common in England, it confers a real 
 benefit, to which all impartial men ought to pay 
 homage. 
 
258 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform. — The subject contmued. 
 
 After having pointed out in my last letter the 
 principal features of the system of Bentham, it 
 would remain for me to speak to you of the 
 means, by which he proposes to carry it into 
 execution with success : but you will dispense 
 with my entering into many particulars on this 
 head, when you are informed, that the simple 
 outline of his scheme of laws occupies more than 
 fifty pages. 
 
 In this we find some traces of the energetic 
 sagacity of his mind, mingled with extravagant 
 conceptions : but we are particularly struck with 
 a strange contrast between that theoretical confi- 
 dence, to which the remoulding of the social order 
 seems to be mere play, and the minute precau- 
 tions, which could have been dictated only by an 
 
LETTER XVT. 259 
 
 excessive prepossession for the manners and 
 institutions of England; so much are the most 
 enterprising- minds unconsciously swayed by the 
 power of habit. 
 
 There is one point of Bentham's system, how- 
 ever, to which I must call your attention, because 
 it coincides with an opinion, unfortunately too 
 common among certain friends of liberty in 
 France : an opinion, which, if not destroyed, will 
 not permit our political institutions to acquire any 
 strength, any real vitality. Accordingly the friends 
 of power, who are ever so little capable of per- 
 ceiving their own interests, take care not to dis- 
 pute it. I speak of voting in secret. 
 
 The election by ballot is an essential part of 
 the system of Bentham, for which he assigns 
 two reasons. On the one hand, he' dreads the 
 influence of superiors in society, of landholders 
 over farmers, of masters over servants, of magis- 
 trates over those subject to their authority. On 
 the other, he would spare the citizens the trouble 
 of repairing to the place of election, and enable 
 them to send their votes under seal, either by 
 the post or otherwise : for every removal from one 
 
 s2 
 
260 LETTER XVI. 
 
 place to another is attended with loss of time, and 
 with trouble; and all trouble is inconsistent with 
 the principle of utility. 
 
 To this nothing can be said, but, that any 
 people, who consider the election of their repre- 
 sentatives as a burden, ought to renounce liberty. 
 If the exercise of your civic rights be irksome to 
 you, if it be not a happiness as well as a duty, if 
 it do not cause your pulse to beat with a generous 
 emotion, bend your neck to the yoke, you will 
 find masters enough to guide you ; or take refuge 
 in the domain of abstractions, and study the ma- 
 thematics ; but do not entertain the vain hope of 
 tasting the enjoyments of liberty: multo majoi^is 
 alapce veneimt. 
 
 It is just however to acknowledge, that there 
 is a happy inconsistency between the doctrines 
 and sentiments of the disciples of Bentham; for 
 few men are more sincerely ardent in the cause of 
 liberty, or ready to make greater sacrifices for it. 
 
 While requiring votes to be sacred, Bentham 
 does not conceal the difficulty of effecting this. 
 Many of our liberals simply imagine, that nothing 
 is requisite for this but a law, and a large paste- 
 
LETTER XVI. 261 
 
 board screen between the president and the 
 elector, who comes to write the name of a candi- 
 date. They fancy every thing is finished, when 
 he has dexterously slipped his ticket into the urn, 
 without any one being able to read it over his 
 shoulder. But Bentham, amid all his Utopian 
 ideas, is not such a novice with regard to practice. 
 He is aware of the innumerable means, by which 
 votes may be known before, during, and after an 
 election; he knows how easy it is, to render all 
 legislative measures on this head illusory; so that 
 you w^ould scarcely credit the number of minute 
 precautions, to which he has recourse. 
 
 First he has a secret box, in which the names 
 of the candidates are deposited. This box 
 resembles a cucumber frame; it is two feet long, 
 one foot broad, fifteen inches deep on one side, 
 and twelve on the other. One of the sides admits 
 the light by a ground glass, through which objects 
 cannot be seen. At each end is a hole, large 
 enough to admit the hand and fore-arm. In the 
 top is a small glass, through which the elector can 
 read the names of the candidates, previously 
 inscribed on tickets lodged in different compart- 
 
262 LETTER XVI. 
 
 merits. These tickets are made of two pieces 
 of paste-board of equal size, united by a iiinge; 
 the name of the candidate is inscribed on one; 
 and the outsides are black : so that, when the two 
 are folded together, no person can read the name 
 within. 
 
 Then comes a tin box to receive the tickets, 
 next stereotype plates, posting bills of all colours, 
 and I know not how many other puerilities, at 
 which respect for the name of Bentham can 
 scarcely prevent your smiling. 
 
 After having raised this tower of cards with great 
 labour, he does not deny, that a breath may over- 
 set it; and that nothing is easier, than to obtain 
 from the electors a direct avowal of their votes, or 
 an indirect acknowledgment. But he hopes to 
 avoid this difficulty by making them sign a decla- 
 ration in the following terms. 
 
 ** I solemnly promise, never to divulge, never to 
 make known, directly or indirectly, to any person 
 whatever, for or against what candidate I have 
 voted. 
 
 " If any word be addressed to me, if any ques- 
 tion or sign be made to me, with the view of 
 
LETTER XVI. 263 
 
 knowing my vote, I will consider such question, 
 word, or sign, as an attempt at oppression. 
 
 " I declare then by these presents, that being 
 placed under the stroke of such oppression, no 
 more confidence is to be attached to any thing I 
 may say, than to the answer I should give a high- 
 way-robber or a madman, to save from immediate 
 destruction my own life or that of a person dear 
 to me." 
 
 *' What signifies," adds Bentham, "what a man 
 says, if none of these words be capable of making 
 any impression on the mind of another? When 
 the vote of an elector is known only to himself, it 
 is not merely easy for him to keep it secret, but 
 absolutely impossible for him to make it known to 
 any other person whatever. I may say to Mr. 
 such a one: ' I have voted for you.' Suppose 
 this to be true, how can Mr. such a one know, 
 that I have spoken the truth? He has no means 
 of convincing himself of it, any more than he 
 would of discovering the truth, if I had asserted 
 the contrary." 
 
 This, you will say, is egregious trifling. No 
 doubt it is : but the sophism it includes is both 
 
264 LETTER XVI. 
 
 serious and full of peril. This is the idea of 
 making untruth on one side, and distrust on the 
 other, guarantees of a democratic constitution : 
 it is the believing that we may form men to 
 freedom, by encouraging in them that political 
 cowardice, that fear of avowing their sentiments 
 in the face of their fellows, which is a thousand 
 times more fatal to liberty than the violence of a 
 conqueror, or the insidiousness of a despot. 
 
 Let us remark here, that, in advocating the 
 secrecy of votes, the partisans of universal suf- 
 frage run into the strangest inconsistency, whether 
 they embrace the doctrines of Bentham, or adopt 
 that of the sovereignty of the people. On the 
 one hand, they deify the public, and allow the 
 citizens in general to possess the highest degree 
 of science, moral and political infallibility : on 
 the other hand, they declare these same citizens 
 unendued with the least courage, and incapable 
 of the slightest resistance to the threats or in- 
 trigues of power. No people deserves this su- 
 perstitious reverence, or this insulting mistrust. 
 
 The partisans of secret voting forget also, that 
 the great benefit of a free election consists not so 
 
LETTER XVI. 265 
 
 much in returning this man or that, as in bringing 
 the citizens together, reanimating their patriotism, 
 and electrifying by the impulse of example those, 
 who, if left to themselves, would sink into selfish- 
 ness and apathy. 
 
 Have patience, I have heard some say; the 
 nation is not yet ripe for what you require of it. 
 Some day perhaps it will acquire the civic courage 
 it wants : at present open voting would be too 
 favourable to the already exorbitant influence of 
 power. Certainly the late elections must at least 
 have convinced us, that power very well accom- 
 modates itself to secret voting: but farther, if 
 this civic courage, for the arrival of which we 
 wait to do what we ought, be never put to the 
 trial, if it be furnished with no opportunity of 
 displaying itself, when can we expect it to make 
 its appearance? What would be said of a general, 
 who, having to form young soldiers to the trade 
 of war, should send them to hide themselves in 
 the casemates, as soon as they heard the enemy's 
 guns ? Yet this is precisely what is proposed 
 to us. 
 
 Besides, and this sets the question at rest. 
 
266 LETTER XVI. 
 
 secrecy of voting in a political election is a mere 
 chimera. When the candidates are of no im- 
 portance, and not necessarily connected with the 
 general sentiments of the electors, I can conceive 
 it possible there might be ignorance, in a certain 
 degree, of the colour of the ball each deposits in 
 the urn. But the choice of a representative is 
 the result of the sentiments and ideas of an 
 elector. For his vote to remain really secret, he 
 must be able to refrain from all conversation, not 
 merely on the subject of politics, but on every 
 thing either closely or remotely connected with 
 it. Tell me what a man thinks on one single 
 circumstance, that is of moment to his country or 
 to mankind, and I will tell you whether he will 
 vote for ^Brougham or for Lord Lowther ; for the 
 ministerial candidate, or for Lafayette. What is 
 known to me, government has a thousand ways of 
 learning; and the conscience of timid electors 
 will be so much the more in its power, in propor- 
 tion as they feel themselves less encouraged by 
 the applause of their fellow-citizens; and less 
 restrained by the apprehension of their censure. 
 Let us reject therefore a prejudice as absurd as 
 
LETTER xvr. 267 
 
 dangerous; and never cease to repeat, that liberty 
 and publicity are two words, two ideas, two sen- 
 timents, naturally inseparable. 
 
 But I must answer a reproach I am led to 
 anticipate. You have long been descanting, you 
 will say, on the philosophical speculations of the 
 school of Bentham ; and say not a word of the 
 plans of reform, which already have been several 
 times the subjects of actual discussion in parlia- 
 ment. After having pointed out to me the Uto- 
 pian schemes of the radicals, make me acquainted 
 with the practical ideas of the whigs. 
 
 On this head, I must confess, I do not feel my 
 mind perfectly free ; and perhaps I ought to fear 
 being unconsciously influenced by the friendship, 
 with which some eminent persons of this party 
 have honoured me. Still the love of truth, if it 
 have been ever so little experienced, has much 
 more power than any other seducement; and I 
 will tell you frankly my thoughts. 
 
 Lord John Russell was doubly called upon, by 
 his name and by his talents, to become the organ 
 of the whigs on a question of such importance. 
 His ideas of reform therefore we may consider, in 
 
268 LETTER xvr. 
 
 some measure, as the official enunciation of the 
 wishes of his party. 
 
 The plan, that bears his present name, consists 
 in reducing to one member the representation of 
 a hundred of the smallest boroughs, that now 
 return two ; and of transferring these hundred 
 nominations to the electors of counties, without 
 making any essential change in the mode of 
 election. 
 
 The same plan of reform, with a few modifica- 
 tions, had already been brought forward at diffe- 
 rent periods, and advocated by men of very 
 different opinions. Cromwell, in his parliament, 
 suppressed the little boroughs, and considerably 
 increased the number of county members : and 
 it is a strange circumstance, that Clarendon, 
 whose tory principles are unquestioned, approves 
 this reform. Was it inconsistency on his part? 
 or must we suppose, that, guided by an aristo- 
 cratic instinct, he suspected such an innovation 
 to be less favourable to democracy in reality than 
 in appearance? The latter explanation, I confess, 
 appears to me to possess most probability. 
 
 Subsequently lord Chatham, and after him 
 
LETTER XVI. 269 
 
 his son, were for adding a hundred county mem- 
 bers to the house of commons. In 1790, Flood 
 proposed the same addition ; requiring, however, 
 that the new members should be chosen by the 
 owners of houses in general, whatever their titles 
 might be. And all the eminent men of the whig 
 party, who from that time to this have called for 
 parliamentary reform, have uniformly sought an 
 addition to the number of county members. 
 
 Would such a reform effect its purpose ? Has 
 it even a determinate object? On these points 
 opinions may differ. 
 
 I conceive, that the aversion to change what 
 has long subsisted has been carried beyond the 
 dictates of prudence, and even to timidity. An 
 institution, though faulty, and even contrary to 
 reason, deserves some regard simply on the score 
 of its duration. On the one hand, it has given 
 rise to interests and to rights, that ought to be 
 respected : on the other, it may be said, that the 
 course of things sometimes palliates in practice 
 the inconveniences of the worst laws ; and that 
 there is in the human mind, as in nature, a sort of 
 correcting power, that repairs the faults of insti- 
 
270 LETTER XVI. 
 
 tutions. I comprehend, therefore, the sentiments 
 of those, who decide for the maintenance of exist- 
 ing usages, though I do not participate in them. 
 But if we would effect a reform, we must neces- 
 sarily proceed on a rational theory : we may 
 make some concessions to circumstances, but the 
 principle must not cease to be our compass. 
 Now it is precisely this principle, which I find it 
 difficult to discover in the plan I have just men- 
 tioned. 
 
 On the one hand, the tories defend the privi- 
 leges and abuses of elections as rights of property : 
 on the other, the radicals claim universal suffrage, 
 and the sovereignty of the people. The whigs 
 reject both systems, but without substituting a 
 third : they content themselves with pursuing an 
 intermediate line, of making what we may call a 
 bad composition by the lump between the two 
 extremes. They do not dispute the sovereignty 
 of the people : they even adopt it as a principle, 
 or rather do not inquire to what doctrine this 
 principle leads : but too rational, or not suffi- 
 ciently bold, to follow it out to its consequences, 
 they content themselves with an approximation, 
 
LETTER XVI. 271 
 
 arid fancy in the meeting of county electors a sort 
 of universal suffrage on a small scale. 
 
 But these forty shillings a year, that qualify 
 an elector for a county, what do they represent ? 
 What is the moral or physical power, of which 
 they are the visible sign ? Is it landed property 
 in preference to all other kinds ? is it property in 
 general ? is it number ? is it capacity, that is to 
 be presumed from a certain degree of fortune? 
 These are questions deserving examination, yet 
 I am not aware, that they have ever been investi- 
 gated in a satisfactory manner. 
 
 No one has a greater aversion than myself to 
 the practice, too common with us, of entering 
 into the metaphysics of political science on every 
 occasion, and continually taking up the social 
 order ab ovo. However, when the object is to 
 modify the very essence of government, we must 
 necessarily have recourse to philosophy, to en- 
 lighten us regarding both the end and the means. 
 As long as a representative system answers the 
 purposes of the society, we may consider it as a 
 settled affair, without investigating its principles, 
 or inquiring into the origin of the right of election. 
 
272 LETTER XVI. 
 
 But when complaints arise ; when the time is 
 arrived to suppress privileges arising from abuse, 
 or to confirm new rights ; it becomes indispen- 
 sable, to trace political power to its source, and 
 to acknowledge, as a principle, that it pertains 
 legitimately to those who are capable of exer- 
 cising it. 
 
 As soon as a truth, at once so simple and pro- 
 lific, is admitted, we have nothing more to do but 
 to examine where the capacity is found, and by 
 what external characters its existence may be 
 known or presumed : for where the capacity is, 
 there also is the right ; and where the capacity is 
 not, the right becomes illusory or an abuse. The 
 first thing to be done, then, is to ascertain what 
 are the portions of the community, the progress 
 and improved state of which render them de- 
 serving a more ample part in the national repre- 
 sentation. By following this principle, no doubt, 
 we are still liable to be deceived, but at least we 
 shall not be proceeding blindfold. 
 
 The end of every political reform is either to 
 escape from an approaching danger, or to satisfy 
 permanent and legitimate wants : that is, in the 
 
LETTER XVI. 273 
 
 case before us, either to guard against the violent 
 invasion of a revolutionary party, or to obtain a 
 more equitable representation of the interests and 
 wishes of all the classes of citizens. 
 
 Would an increase of the number of county 
 members answer either of these purposes? I 
 think not, and for a very simple reason : it is, that 
 in the present state of manners and property 
 in England, county elections, though wearing a 
 democratic garb, are essentially aristocratic both 
 in their spirit and in their results. In vain shall 
 I be told, that measures will be taken in the 
 scheme of reform, to render elections less expen- 
 sive, and consequently accessible to a greater 
 number of candidates: my answer is, men's habits 
 and practice in this respect will long remain more 
 powerful than the laws. 
 
 Now, if it be acknowledged on the one hand, 
 that the representative body should be as far as 
 possible a faithful image of the country ; and if 
 it must be admitted on the other, that the pro- 
 gress of wealth and knowledge is much more 
 rapid in the middle classes than among the nobi- 
 lity; and that, even in England, the aristocracy 
 
 T 
 
274 LETTER XVI. 
 
 does not escape that kind of sterility, by which 
 it is struck throughout the whole world ; it will 
 remain confest, that such a reform of parliament, 
 as would increase the aristocratic influence, in- 
 stead of enlarging that of manufactures and com- 
 merce, would be far from answering the real 
 wants of the nation. 
 
 It would be childish presumption on my part, 
 to lay down here a plan of reform after my own 
 ideas; but this, I think, I may say with confi- 
 dence, that the end which ought to be pursued 
 in England is, to increase the influence of the 
 middle classes* 
 
 And in this view, without making any alteration 
 in the rights at present enjoyed by the county 
 electors, the new members to be returned on the 
 hypothesis of reducing the number of boroughs, 
 it appears to me, might be advantageously left to 
 electors possessing a higher qualification, but 
 including movable as well as landed property. 
 This innovation seems to me naturally suggested 
 in a country, where so large a portion of the 
 public wealth is of this kind: and, by placing the 
 elective franchise in the hands of richer and more 
 
LETTER XVI. 2'75 
 
 enlightened citizens, it would furnish, I think, a 
 simple as well as efficacious means of destroying 
 corruption, and diminishing the exorbitant ex- 
 penses incurred in the present elections. 
 
 A reform of this kind would not only be the 
 most equitable in a time of tranquillity, it would 
 also be the most prudent in a period of revolution. 
 For if ever, which God forbid, turbulent factions 
 should threaten the public quiet in England ; if 
 the poorer classes, urged by a demagogical rage, 
 should rush to spoil the higher ranks ; the aris- 
 tocracy would be incapable of defending itself by 
 its own arms, and the middle class alone could 
 speak the language of justice and reason to the 
 people with any authority. 
 
 t2 
 
276 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 
 Sittings of Parliament. — House of Commons. 
 
 If the ideas of our politicians be more just and 
 enlarged on different points of political philosophy 
 than those of the English, the latter resume their 
 superiority, when we enter into the sphere of prac- 
 tice; and this superiority is particularly observ- 
 able in the conduct of parliamentary debates. 
 
 During my different residences in England, I 
 omitted few opportunities of being present at the 
 sittings of the house of commons or of the peers; 
 and I know nothing that would have afforded me 
 more pleasure, if the enjoyment of it had not been 
 embittered by the sad comparison with ourselves. 
 In fact, our assemblies are in such a bad train, the 
 faults of our system of public deliberation are so 
 numerous, that, when we have once compared it 
 
LETTER XVII. 277 
 
 with a better model, there attaches to it not 
 merely a rational censure, but a kind of ridicule, 
 that the eloquence even of our first orators is not 
 always sufficient to make us forget. In this 
 respect we are without excuse: we cannot plead 
 ancient laws, or customs consecrated by time. 
 Whatever pompous phrases destitute of sense we 
 may employ, our present representative govern- 
 ment is merely an imitation of England: it is 
 unpardonable therefore, to have copied it badly, 
 or knowingly to have departed from rules and cus- 
 toms, the wisdom of which was most fully proved. 
 One incontestable fact, in the first place, is, that 
 the English parliament now passes four or five 
 hundred laws in a session, and that we can 
 scarcely adopt fifteen or twenty in the same space 
 of time. Yet our projects of laws are subjected 
 only to a single discussion, and this almost always 
 interrupted by a call for the question ; while the 
 acts of parliament have to undergo the test of 
 three distinct readings or debates, and the rules 
 of the houses aff*ord an opposition nearly fifteen 
 different methods of delaying the progress of a 
 proposed law. 
 
278 LETTER XVII. 
 
 A second fact not less certain is, that, notwith- 
 standing the lamentable slowness of proceeding of 
 our assemblies, the laws are always drawn up 
 inconsiderately, and voted tumultuously. Who- 
 ever has attended to the debates of our lower 
 chamber may have convinced himself, that the 
 members pass almost at once from an academic 
 pedantry to a revolutionary violence : and amid a 
 nation justly celebrated for the elegance of its 
 manners and the urbanity of its behaviour, it is 
 astonishing to see the opposite parties recipro- 
 cally abusing each other in the coarsest terms, 
 and speakers interrupted every instant by brutish 
 clamour, without a debate ever maintaining that 
 tone, at once energetic and temperate, which is 
 the distinguishing characteristic of the English 
 assemblies. 
 
 What must we infer from this? Shall we join 
 our detractors, both French and foreign, to 
 renounce the most beautiful titles of the human 
 race, and declare ourselves incapable of liberty ? 
 God forbid, that I should ever admit this absurd 
 calumny: a calumny that is palpably refuted by 
 the progress our nation daily makes in despite of 
 
LJETTER XTII. 27^ 
 
 its government. On the other hand, can we say, 
 that our civil dissensions, and the animosities 
 bequeathed to us by the revolution, are sufficient 
 to explain the sad spectacle, which our delibera- 
 tive assemblies often exhibit ? and have we a right 
 to maintain, that Americans or Englishmen, under 
 similar circumstances, would not act better than 
 ourselves ? 
 
 No doubt it must be confessed, of all politi- 
 cal situations, that, which renders the mainte- 
 nance of order in debates most difficult, is the 
 combination of a ministry subject to the caprices 
 of an ignorant and passionate majority, with an 
 opposition too far from homogeneous in its struc- 
 ture, and possessing too little chance of attaining 
 power, to be willing to impose on itself a regular 
 discipline under leaders acknowledged as such. 
 But, admitting this indisputable fact, we must 
 also allow, that our parliamentary education is 
 still in a state of the greatest imperfection; and 
 that the forms hitherto adopted by our assemblies 
 oppose an almost invincible obstacle to the pro- 
 gress, which we might make in this respect. 
 
 Westminister and its two spacious edifices are 
 
280 LETTER XVII. 
 
 to England, what the Forum and the Capitol were 
 to Rome. The traditions of the past in all their ma- 
 gic, the interests of the present in all their vigour, 
 are concentrated there. There repose the ashes of 
 heroes and poets: there a new generation is 
 rising, to supply their place at some future day : 
 there the superior courts pronounce their decrees, 
 and the parliament rules the fate of England and 
 of the world. The imagination, as well as the eye, 
 is incessantly drawn toward those monuments 
 filled with the memorials of history, and even the 
 power of habit is unable to weaken the respect 
 and emotion we feel on approaching them. 
 
 We traverse the vast hall in which the house of 
 lords assembles, when it sits as a court of justice 
 in trials by impeachment. There Strafford was 
 condemned : there Charles I . heard sentence passed 
 upon him: there but the other day the eloquence 
 of Burke and of Whitbread thundered against 
 Hastings, and against lord Melville. This hall 
 is constantly open to the public : it serves as an 
 ante-chamber to the three courts of justice that 
 open into it. Its maj esty is degraded by no modern 
 decoration: the ceiling, though of wood, has 
 
LETTER XVII. 281 
 
 always been repaired in the Gothic style, and 
 strictly retains its character. 
 
 From this hall a very plain staircase leads to 
 the lobby of the house of commons, a small room 
 wholly devoid of ornament, in which meet indis- 
 criminately members of parliament going in or 
 out, men of business who come to inquire the 
 fate of a bill, or to catch members as they pass, 
 and request them to frank letters, idlers, curious 
 persons, and even sellers of oranges; for to the 
 orators of the English parliament oranges supply 
 the place of the sugared water of ours. To this 
 lobby the majority or minority retires, when a 
 division on a question takes place, and the votes 
 are counted: and here the unfortunate Percival 
 fell by the hand of an assassin. 
 
 Two old men in plain black coats, sitting on 
 wooden stools on each side of the door, are the 
 sole guards of this house of commons, the power 
 of which embraces both hemispheres. No bayonet 
 appears to offend the eye; and the idea of a pre- 
 sident, marching by sound of drum would appear 
 ridiculous to those, whom it did not shock as 
 unconstitutional. The pompous introduction of 
 
282 LETTER XVII. 
 
 our ministers would seem equally strange. The 
 speaker, as the official representative of the pri- 
 vileges of the house, is the only person whose 
 entrance is accompanied with any ceremony: he 
 is preceded by the sergeant at arms and the 
 mace, and followed by the train-bearer, supporting 
 the skirt of his robe, an office not reckoned in the 
 number of sinecures, though this is the only duty^ 
 I believe, attached to it. 
 
 Nothing is more strange and unexpected than 
 the appearance of the interior of the house of 
 commons ; nothing at first sight so little answer- 
 ing to all the records of history, to all the images 
 of greatness and majesty, with which the mind 
 feels as it were intoxicated, when you first cross 
 the threshold. The chamber is small, and with- 
 out decoration : you see neither gold, nor marble, 
 nor tapestry ; nothing but wainscot and benches 
 of oak, of that sturdy oak, to which the people of 
 England have so often been compared. 
 
 On the benches on either hand deputies in 
 boots, with a whip in the hand, and often even 
 with their hats on their heads, sit or loll at their 
 ease, reading a newspaper, conversing with their 
 
LKTTER XVII. 283 
 
 neighbours, or sleeping, while they wait for a 
 debate to interest or amuse them. At the first 
 sight of such an assembly, a superficial observer 
 would be tempted to imagine himself among a 
 club of republicans: but on a closer view, we 
 shall soon discover in this familiarity itself a re- 
 finement of aristocracy, from which pride is not 
 excluded. What need is there of restraint among 
 gentlemen? why make a display of politeness 
 among people of quality, all equally assured of 
 the liberality of their education, and the elegance 
 of their manners ? Why bind themselves down to 
 a studied dignity, when with a single word they 
 can make all the majesty of parliament appear, 
 and display the formidable apparatus of its power ? 
 Such, I believe, is the bottom of their hearts, and 
 the true explanation of the apparent familiarity 
 in the house of commons. 
 
 Amid this absence of restraint, certain points 
 of parliamentary civility never fail to be strictly 
 observed; and no reproach is more sensibly felt 
 than that of having been guilty of some unparlia- 
 mentary expression or proceeding. Thus in many 
 a drawing-room not a few persons are to be found. 
 
284 LETTER XVII. 
 
 who would rather be accused of a breach of 
 morality, than of having sinned against the man- 
 ners of the world. 
 
 The grave dress of the speaker forms a strange 
 contrast with the simple coats, surtouts, or hunt- 
 ing jackets, of the members. His black gown, 
 and the enormous wig that covers his head, re- 
 mind the house as well as himself, that he is a 
 judge,* and a judge against whose decrees there 
 is no appeal: every member respects himself in 
 him, and the words order, order, uttered in a low 
 voice, are sufficient from him to obtain silence, 
 and to put an end to all interruption. The ser- 
 geant at arms, in a court dress, and with a sword 
 by his side, sits near the bar. His dress is repre- 
 sentative of urbanity, as his office is of power. 
 Finally, the gold mace, surmounted by a crown, 
 the symbol of the imperial sway of parliament, 
 which lies on the table as long as the speaker is 
 in the chair, is like a sleeping lion, terrible if 
 roused. 
 
 * In England judges and counsellors, when in the courts^ 
 wear wigs, the size and form of which vary according to their 
 different ranks. 
 
LETTER xvir. 285 
 
 If you doubt, whether this absence of restraint 
 among the members be merely one of the modes 
 of aristocracy, follow the same orators to any 
 other public meeting, an assembly of the people 
 at large or of burgesses, and you will see them 
 as prodigal of the formalities of respect and mo- 
 desty, as they are plain and sometimes rude in 
 their manners and speech in the house of commons. 
 Why is this? Because in the one case politeness, 
 in the other familiarity, is a mark of rank. 
 
 1 have never crossed the Atlantic: but men, 
 who have been so fortunate as to be present at 
 meetings of congress at Washington, have assured 
 me, that they found there less ease and more 
 dignity, than in the English house of commons. 
 This I should have expected. The American re- 
 presentatives feel themselves constantly in pre- 
 sence of the people, who are their judges, and 
 who alone have made them what they are: the 
 members of parliament, always certain of being 
 elected by right of birth or right of conquest, are 
 a little like the kings of legitimacy, whose plea- 
 sure it is, to hold their power only from God and 
 their swords, and to be accountable to no person. 
 
286 BETTER xvir. 
 
 The room in which the commons meet, its ar- 
 rangement, and its dimensions, may be reckoned 
 without any paradox among the happy circum- 
 stances, that have concurred in the developement 
 of the representative government in England. 
 Of this I think you will be convinced, when you 
 cast your eye on the plan of it subjoined to my 
 letter: and a few remarks will make you sensible 
 of the advantages, which it possesses over our 
 halls, copied from the theatres of the Greeks, 
 and over that tribune, an actual bastion flanked 
 with two curtains, to which our deputies rush 
 as to an assault, and where they fight as in a 
 breach. 
 
 The form of the room is an oblong square. The 
 seat of the speaker occupies the extremity op- 
 posite the entrance. Before it a large table is 
 placed, at which sit two clerks in black gowns. 
 On this table, the bills, petitions, and all other 
 parliamentary papers are laid. On the right hand 
 of the speaker and on the left are five rows of 
 benches, those of the treasury and of the oppo- 
 sition. The leaders of each phalanx usually take 
 their seats on the lower bench near the table, that 
 
LETTER XV£I. 287 
 
 they may more easily consult the papers relating 
 to the subject in debate. Here Pitt and Fox 
 were seated ; here Canning and Brougham face 
 each other. Thus the breadth of the table is the 
 only interval, that separates the minister from 
 the leaders of the opposition : and in the contest, 
 each of the antagonists is able to note, not only 
 all the inflexions of his adversary's voice, but 
 even the slightest movements of his features. 
 Need I say how much of nature, of interest, and 
 of life, this single circumstance imparts to the 
 debate? 
 
 The simplest interpellation addressed to a mi- 
 nister from the summit of the tribune assumes the 
 air of a defiance, or a declaration of war. The 
 same question put just at hand, from one side of 
 the table to the other, has the easy character of 
 conversation, and produces a frank and familiar 
 answer, that smooths many a difficulty in a couple 
 of words. 
 
 The benches of which I have spoken are not 
 sufficient to accommodate all the members of the 
 house, when it is full ; and the deficiency is sup- 
 
288 LETTER xvir. 
 
 plied by a gallery above, where those members 
 sit, who cannot find room below. 
 
 On the right and left of the door, without the 
 bar, are two galleries with seats rising above one 
 another, appropriated to peers and their sons, 
 masters in chancery performing the office of mes- 
 sengers of state, and such strangers as the speaker 
 thinks fit to permit to be present within the room 
 itself. Over these seats is the public gallery, 
 which will not contain, I believe, more than a 
 hundred and fifty persons. 
 
 The confined dimensions of the room, and the 
 small number of spectators, are likewise fortunate 
 circumstances, to which I request your attention. 
 It allows the persons who speak to be heard, 
 without altering the natural intonation of their 
 voice; and thus excludes both theatrical swell 
 and the appeal to the passions of the multitude : 
 rocks which our tribune, our amphitheatres, and 
 our galleries often render very difficult to avoid. 
 
 The members speak standing in their places. 
 The speaker gives them permission by calling on 
 them by name. When two members rise to- 
 
LETTER XVII. 289 
 
 gether, the speaker or the house decides which 
 shall have the priority. But an instance scarcely 
 ever occurs, in which this point is disputed. The 
 simple feeling of propriety instantly points out to 
 the house, and to the parties themselves, which 
 ought to have the preference. If it be a question 
 of general policy, precedence is naturally given 
 to the most distinguished talents : if some parti- 
 cular subject, the priority will be ceded to him 
 whose station, connections, or studies, enable 
 him to throw most light on the discussion. Far 
 from being set aside, such a man is invited to 
 come forward; and, even if he be little accus- 
 tomed to speak, he is listened to attentively, as 
 long as he has facts to produce. 
 
 The certainty of being heard, if a man rise to 
 speak, prevents all apprehension on this score; 
 it contributes powerfully to the maintenance of 
 order, and thus renders the progress of a debate 
 much more rapid, though it is left to die a natural 
 death, without arbitrarily interrupting a speaker, 
 as with us, by voting to close it [par un vote de 
 cldture]. If, when the house is tired, clattering 
 with the feet, low murmurs, and cries of " ques- 
 
 u 
 
290 LETTER XVII. 
 
 tion, question," be heard, these are only symp- 
 toms of impatience not possible to be avoided : 
 but the majority never says to the opposition, 
 " you shall not only submit to our strength, but 
 We v^^ill not even hear your reasons." This, how- 
 ever, is the plain meaning of our votes of closing 
 the debate, by which, in our houses, the stronger 
 party imposes silence on the minority. 
 
 I must call your attention to two practices of 
 the house of commons, frivolous in appearance, 
 yet of the highest importance in regard to the 
 debates. The first is that of addressing the 
 speaker, instead of the house, or of the member . 
 answered.* The next, that of never mentioning 
 a member by name. 
 
 The first of these customs is no doubt a fiction, 
 but a fiction acknowledged to be so essential to 
 
 * In the upper house, every person who speaks addresses 
 himself to the whole house, using the phrase my lords; be- 
 cause the lord chancellor, who presides, being one of the 
 ministry, and therefore called on to take an active part in the 
 debates, is not looked upon as an impartial person, and, as we 
 may say, an abstract being, like the speaker of the honse of 
 commons. This is a distinction of great delicacy. 
 
LETTER XVII. 291 
 
 the maintenance of order, that its observance is 
 carried almost to pedantry. Thus, if an opposi- 
 tion member be on his legs, and speaking, should 
 a member, who is in the habit of sitting by his 
 side, but on his right hand, and consequently 
 nearer the speaker, enter the house, he will not 
 go straight to his seat, but will walk toward the 
 treasury benches, go round behind the speaker's 
 chair, and return to his seat by this circuitous 
 course, rather than pass between the speaker and 
 the member who is supposed to be addressing 
 him. It would be the same, if a ministerial 
 member entered while one of his colleagues was 
 speaking; he would walk along the opposition 
 side, and return to that of the treasury, after 
 having passed round the president's chair; thus 
 acting in conformity to the same principle of 
 politeness as would not permit any one to pass 
 between two persons conversing together in a 
 drawing-room. And though, in fact, the minister 
 and the opposition member are the true interlo- 
 cutors, the fiction is superior to the reality: you 
 may pass between them without impropriety ; 
 but it would be a breach of good manners to pass 
 
 u 2 
 
292 LETTER XVII. 
 
 between the member speaking and the speaker 
 of the house, who is perhaps at the time busied 
 on something very different from the member's 
 speech. 
 
 Heflecting on this fiction, which appears whim- 
 sical at first sight, we shall find it bottomed on a 
 very just and nice observation of the laws of the 
 human mind. A man has only to consult his 
 own feelings, to perceive that an address in the 
 second person, as — you have said — you have 
 done — your assertions — your conduct — your 
 schemes—, puts our self-love more on its guard, 
 and more powerfully excites our irritability, than 
 an indirect answer addressed to an impartial pre- 
 sident, whose aspect alone is sufficient to remind 
 us of the bounds, that are not to be passed in a 
 debate. This form of discussion admits the 
 employment of much more energetic language, 
 without any fear of exciting the passions. A 
 man will patiently hear his words and actions 
 censured or even ridiculed, when his adversary 
 attacks him as the honom^able memhei^ on the other 
 side of the house ; but he would feel his vanity 
 wounded, or his honour offended, if the same 
 
LETTER XVII. 293 
 
 words were addressed directly to himself, and in 
 the second person. 
 
 The other rule, of which I have spoken, that of 
 never designating a member by his name, pro- 
 ceeds from the same principle. Any one who 
 should infringe this rule, would be immediately 
 called to order, and reminded of the impropriety 
 by a general murmur : but it is become so fami- 
 liar to all, that an instance of deviation from it 
 scarcely ever occurs, even amid the warmest 
 debate. 
 
 Neither are the denominations, by which a 
 member is designated in debate, destitute of im- 
 portance. Sometimes it is simply by the name 
 of the town or county he represents ; and by 
 thus identifying a member with his constituents, 
 the ties that unite them are drawn closer. " The 
 honourable member for Durham, for Winchelsea, 
 for Liverpool, for Westminster," becomes a syno- 
 nime for Lambton, Brougham, Huskisson, or sir 
 Francis Burdett. Sometimes it is by his title, as 
 " the noble lord opposite, or by my side :" or by 
 his office, " the right honourable secretary of 
 state," or merely *' the right honourable gentle- 
 
294 LETTER XVII. 
 
 man." You are aware, that the epithet of right 
 honourable is applied particularly to members of 
 the privy council. At other times it is by the 
 qualities naturally ascribed to a certain profes- 
 sion, as " the gallant officer," speaking of a mili- 
 tary man; *'the learned counsellor, or sergeant," 
 if of a lawyer. If he who speaks be of the same 
 profession, he will add to the epithet that of '* my 
 friend," even when speaking of a person of the 
 opposite party. Thus the attorjiey -general will 
 style Mr. Scarlett, or Mr. Brougham, " my ho- 
 nourable and learned friend;" because a similarity 
 of profession establishes a familiarity of inter- 
 xjourse between them, which it is presumed a 
 difference in political opinion ought not to inter- 
 rupt. It suffices to read the English newspapers 
 to perceive to what degree this parliamentary 
 politeness, when it has become an established 
 custom, and has nothing of affectation in it, im- 
 parts dignity and elegance to debates, even on 
 the least interesting subjects. 
 
 Not only are written speeches prohibited in 
 the house of commons, but unmerciful ridicule 
 would be applied to any supposed to be learned 
 
LETTER XV LI. 295 
 
 by heart, and in this the hearers could not be 
 deceived. Orators who speak from memory are 
 like Petit-Jean, what they know best is the be- 
 ginning ; as they proceed, their confidence dimi- 
 nishes, and their delivery becomes low and mo- 
 notonous. They who speak extempore, on the 
 contrary, become animated as they penetrate 
 more deeply into their subject; and acquire, to- 
 ward the conclusion of their speech, that facility 
 of elocution which is sometimes wanting to them 
 at the commencement. 
 
 This prohibition of written speeches is of such 
 constitutional importance, that, as long as it is 
 unadopted in our chambers, we cannot be said to 
 have really entered into the representative sys- 
 tem ; and to have passed the barrier that sepa- 
 rates governments of the old fashion, in which 
 the deliberative assembly is a mere solemn ex- 
 crescence, from those in which it discusses the 
 interests and directs the affairs of the country. 
 
 The first quality the English seek in an orator, 
 the first characteristic by which they recognise 
 the statesman, is that of being what they call a 
 good debater; that is to say, always ready to 
 
296 LETTER XVII. 
 
 answer the arguments of an opponent, and capable 
 of bringing forward his own ideas, not only in the 
 order in which he has digested them, but in what- 
 ever manner the course of the debate may require. 
 And in fact, to write well on a question, it may 
 be sufficient to have studied it in one point of 
 view : to speak well on it, requires to have 
 turned it every way, and examined it under all 
 its aspects. In one of the systems the style pre- 
 dominates, in the other the argument: on one 
 side is pedantry and lifelessness, on the other 
 simplicity and animation. 
 
 Written speeches, beside the inconveniences 
 peculiar to them, have also that of falsifying the 
 style of the eloquence of those orators themselves, 
 who have a copious flow of language, by com- 
 pelling them as it were to pay more attention to 
 the manner than the matter ; for the ear of the 
 public being accustomed to the academical cor- 
 rectness of written speeches, it requires the same 
 regularity from such as speak extempore, and 
 wonders at the least hesitatipn, at the slightest 
 pause. In England they are not so rigid : an 
 orator is allowed to correct himself, to reflect, to 
 
LETTER XVII. 297 
 
 meditate a moment on his ideas; and all that 
 strictness of examination, which with us is applied 
 to the style, is employed there on the facts and 
 arguments. In the parliament I have seen a 
 speaker listened to with delight, whose delivery 
 was painful, who hesitated, who at times could 
 with difficulty find an expression corresponding 
 to. his thoughts, but whose captivating eloquence 
 also flowed at times like a torrent ; and, in the 
 same sitting, a speech of the purest language, 
 delivered with elegant facility, excited only 
 weariness. 
 
 But is it just, you will say, to make the talent 
 of speaking extempore the first condition, and 
 sine qua non, of a legislative career ? May it not 
 happen, that a representative, endowed with all 
 the other qualities that form the statesman and 
 politician, is deficient in this alone, and that his 
 country is injured by being deprived of the assist- 
 ance of his talents ?* May it not happen too, that. 
 
 * On this point I have heard adduced the example of the 
 orator, who, in this very session, has commanded the admira- 
 tion of attentive France by a written speech. But, if on a 
 
298 LETTER XVII. 
 
 in certain circumstances, a particular member or 
 a minister, even possessing the talent of speaking, 
 may think it incumbent on him to guard against 
 the possibility of any imprudent expressions, that 
 might escape him in the warmth of an extempo- 
 rary speech ? Certainly, what you here suppose 
 may occur : and it is equally possible, that a 
 magistrate, endued with sagacity and patience 
 insurmountable, but hard of hearing, would dis- 
 cern the truth better in a written statement, than 
 by a public pleading with confrontation of wit- 
 nesses. Yet what lawyer, worthy of the name, 
 would hesitate in the present day between the 
 secret process and the oral debate, between trial 
 by jury and the darksome code, that Charles V. 
 bequeathed to Europe ? General laws are not to 
 be framed, to meet such rare exceptions. And 
 as to the being hurried away in the tribune. 
 
 question of deep religious and political philosophy, when the 
 truth had no chance of being triumphant by discussion, a sage 
 thought it his duty to engrave as it were on brass his solemn 
 protest, does it follow that he would have spoken with less 
 talent than he wrote? Assuredly not, and his legislative 
 career has Winced the contrary. 
 
LETTER XVII. 299 
 
 which is dreaded, I see in it, on the contrary, 
 one of the greatest benefits of extemporary 
 speaking, one of its noblest and most advan- 
 tageous moral consequences. Under the influ- 
 ence of its magic power, the dissembler is impel- 
 led to frankness, the cold heart finds something 
 of a generous inspiration, and vanity itself some- 
 times supplies the place of emotion in minds 
 dried up by selfishness. 
 
 With regard to extemporary speaking, we want 
 nothing but the will to attain excellence. No 
 nation in Europe has such a natural aptitude to 
 the art of oratory. I call to witness the trans- 
 cendant talents, that ten years of a very imper- 
 fect representative government have already un- 
 folded in a chamber, composed of deputies whose 
 age at a medium is fifty-five. The annals even of 
 the British parliament furnish few debates com- 
 parable to the discussion of the law respecting 
 the press, in the session of 1819. 
 
300 
 
 LETTER XVIIl. 
 
 Continuation of the preceding. — The House of Peers. 
 
 The room in which the peers meet is more spa- 
 cious and more ornamented than that of the com- 
 mons. It is an oblong square; one of the ends of 
 which is occupied by the royal throne; and at the 
 other, below the bar, is the space reserved for the 
 public. Here the members of the house of com- 
 mons, with the speaker at their head, stand un- 
 covered to hear the king's speech. At this bar 
 also the counsellors and their clients place them- 
 selves, when the house is supposed to sit as a 
 court of appeal. I say supposed, for in this case 
 the lord chancellor is the only real judge, even 
 when the appeal is from himself, as presiding in the 
 the court of chancery, to himself, as presiding in 
 the house of lords. The two peers taking a nap 
 
LETTER XVIII. 301 
 
 during the pleadings are there merely for form 
 sake.* 
 
 I have asked myself on this occasion what 
 vi^ould take place, if a few young lords, from a 
 spirit of opposition, or even as a party of pleasure, 
 should come unexpectedly to constitute a ma- 
 jority against the grave opinion of the chancellor. 
 The answer is in the empire of habit and of good 
 sense. But the same sentiment of propriety, 
 which in civil causes would keep away from 
 judicial debates peers not familiar with legal 
 studies, would call them thither on the contrary, 
 if some subject of general interest were to be dis- 
 cussed, or some serious cause of complaint against 
 the chancellor in the first instance. 
 
 The throne is separated from the seats occupied 
 by the peers by a little partition breast-high. On 
 the right hand are the benches of the bishops, 
 beyond them those of the ministry; on the left 
 hand those of the opposition. On common 
 occasions the peers of the blood royal have no 
 
 * There must be at least three members present to give 
 judgment. 
 
302 LETTER xvm. 
 
 place particularly assigned them, each sitting 
 among his political friends : the duke of York on 
 the side of the ministry, to which he belongs ; the 
 duke of Sussex with the opposition. 
 
 The woolsack, on which the chancellor sits, is 
 precisely what its name implies, a large bag of 
 wool, covered with red cloth, without any kind of 
 back tolean against; and such is the minute respect 
 paid to ancient customs in the slightest things, that 
 the present chancellor, a man near eighty years of 
 age, hesitated more than seven years on the question, 
 whether he should allow a cushion to be brought 
 him, when the sitting was too long and fatiguing. 
 
 When a messenger from the commons is an- 
 nounced, as bringing to the upper house bills 
 passed by the other branch of the legislature, the 
 chancellor rises, and goes to the bar, carrying 
 in his hand a bag of red velvet embroidered with 
 gold, into which the messenger from the commons 
 puts the first bill, with which the chancellor 
 returns, to deposit it in its place. He then goes 
 to fetch a second, a third, a fourth, making as 
 many journeys as there are bills, instead of taking 
 them all at once. To each of these processions 
 
LETTER XVIII. 303 
 
 of the chancellor is attached a fee of ten guineas, 
 when it is a private bill ; and these fees form no 
 inconsiderable portion of the casual profits of the 
 office. Malicious observers say, that it is not 
 impossible, to see by the chancellor's countenance, 
 whether the bill be of the private kind, or per- 
 tain to the public concerns of the state. 
 
 To introduce such ceremonies where they are 
 unknown, would be as absurd as peurile; and 
 even in a country where they have long existed 
 it would not be easy to justify them in the eyes 
 of reason. However, when they affect no serious 
 interests, and do not retard the progress of busi- 
 ness, they may please some people's minds, by 
 connecting the present with the remembrances of 
 another age. 
 
 Women are wholly excluded from the sit- 
 tings of the house of commons. No exception is 
 allowed to this rule, but for princesses of the 
 blood, and ladies accompanying them. Except 
 this very rare instance, it is only disguised as a 
 man, that a woman can go to hear her husband 
 or brother speak. In the house of lords they 
 enjoy a little more indulgence : they sometimes 
 
304 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 obtain permission to be present behind the hang- 
 ings that surround the throne. I even recollect a 
 legislative question, on which the solicitations of 
 some ladies of hi oh rank had exerted so much 
 influence, that, in coming to hear the debates, 
 they seemed less like simple spectators, than 
 generals of an army following with their eyes a 
 battle, of which they had traced the plan. This 
 however is only an irregularity, from which no 
 inference is to be drawn ; but it struck me the 
 more, as I should have thought it incompatible 
 with the political practices of the English. 
 
 In general the forms of deliberation are the 
 same in the house of lords as in the house of 
 commons ; or at least the differences are not so 
 important as to be worth reciting. 
 
 What eminently distinguishes the parliamentary 
 speakers of our day consists in the simplicity and 
 correctness of their reasoning. I spoke to you 
 in my early letters of the propensity the English 
 have, to confine all questions within the temperate 
 circle of practical ideas immediately applicable to 
 the interests of their country. It is of late more 
 especially, that this tendency of men's minds has 
 
LETTER xviir, 305 
 
 become evident. When lord Chatham held the 
 sceptre of the parliament, and till near the com- 
 mencement of the American war, the character of 
 political eloquence in England more resembled 
 what it is with us. Quotations from Locke 
 abounded in the speeches of that period, in which 
 we often find political questions connected with 
 the general principles of moral philosophy. 
 
 In the following generation the fashion had 
 undergone a change : and during the reign of 
 Pitt, Fox, and the great orators who are still 
 distinguished under the name of the race of giants, 
 we see men's minds gradually declaring more and 
 more against all emphasis in delivery, and meta- 
 physical flights in argument. The general feeling 
 was so decided in this respect, that even the 
 talents of Burke could not surmount it. When 
 he rose to speak, every one was for retiring, to 
 such a degree that he got the nick-name of the 
 dinner bell; and some of his discourses most ad- 
 mired in print were delivered in an empty house. 
 
 On considering the actual composition of the 
 parliament, we shall find, I believe, that, by the 
 side of a few men of talent, who will bear a com- 
 
 X 
 
30^ LETTER XVIII. 
 
 parison with the greatest models, are a number 
 possessed of just notions, and practical knowledge, 
 which render it on the whole superior to any 
 ©f its predecessors. It is only on matters of 
 public economy however, that this superiority is 
 incontestable. When we enter a loftier sphere, 
 we are sometimes painfully affected by something 
 narrow in its notions, and incomplete in its reason- 
 ing. It is impossible not to remark this in the 
 debates relating to the religious and political 
 organization of Ireland. The questions in general 
 are neither attacked nor defended on a field suffi- 
 ciently large; and we are astonished not to find 
 in the discussion either the reflections or the ex- 
 amples, that would throw the greatest light on it. 
 "When the object is merely to improve the in- 
 ternal administration of a country, where the 
 great bases of liberty and justice are already 
 secured, undoubtedly we cannot go straight 
 forward to the fact : but when, as in Ireland, the 
 social system itself is to be remoulded, how can 
 we avoid tracing it up to its source? The solu- 
 tions that are not afforded by history must be 
 discovered by reason. ,, 
 
LETTER xriir. 307 
 
 What, in my eyes at least, gives the parlia- 
 mentary debates an incomparable attraction, is 
 less the extent and loftiness of the ideas produced, 
 than the manly simplicity of form their eloquence 
 assumes. Tranquil in the feeling of their moral 
 dignity, the orators never think of putting on a 
 borrowed grandeur : the style of speaking is easy : 
 pleasantry, far from being rejected, is favourably 
 received : allusions to the national literature, or 
 to the models of Rome and Athens, lend a charm 
 and colouring to subjects sometimes dry in them- 
 selves ; and quotations of the ancients have nothing 
 pedantic amid an audience to which the slightest 
 shades of the classical languages are familiar. 
 
 An opposition member one day, attacking th6 
 government on the profusion of its expenditure, 
 quoted the phrase of Cicero : Optimwn vectigal 
 est parcimonia : but, mistaking the Latin prosody^ 
 he pronounced it vectigal, making a long syllable 
 short. ** Vectigal.,''' said the minister (I think it 
 tvas lord North) ; contenting himself, by way of 
 answer, with restoring the quantity, which h.\^ 
 opponent had mutilated ; and the jest was m- 
 stantly relished by the whole house. 
 
 X 2 
 
308 LETTER XVIII. 
 
 Fox quoted the verses of Homer and Sophocles, 
 with which his surprising memory was enriched, 
 certain of being understood by his hearers ; and 
 though this practice is now. out of fashion, to have 
 studied ancient literature, to be a good scholar, 
 is still one of the essential conditions for shining 
 in parliament. 
 
 In comparing the two branches of the English 
 legislature, and reflecting on the talents of the 
 first order included in the house of lords, I have 
 often been surprised, that the debates of this 
 house are not so interesting as those of the com- 
 mons ; and that, except on extraordinary occa- 
 sions, they are in some measure cold and languid. 
 It may be said, no doubt, that, as most bills 
 originate in the lower house, the first and liveliest 
 interest is exhausted, when they arrive at the 
 house of peers : but on the other hand, the votes 
 of this house have all the importance of a deci- 
 sion after an appeal from an inferior court. I 
 conceive therefore, that we must seek for other 
 causes of a phenomenon, that may justly excite 
 surprise. If I were called upon to point them 
 out, perhaps I should find two ; one physical. 
 
LETTER XVllI. 
 
 309 
 
 and secondary, in the disproportion between the 
 extent of the house, and the small number of 
 peers in the habit of attending it : the other more 
 important, and more general, in the progressive 
 weakening, that the aristocratic principle expe- 
 riences throughout the world. Even in England, 
 where venerable trunks are yet standing, their 
 vital strength gradually 4isappears, and the sap 
 of the imagination takes another course. 
 
310 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 
 The course of legislative Debates in France and 
 England compared. 
 
 Jn my last letter but one, I observed, that, not- 
 withstanding the numerous precautions, with 
 which the deliberations of the English parliament 
 are surrounded, business proceeds with incom- 
 parably greater rapidity than in our chambers, 
 though the laws are subjected only to a sin- 
 gle discussion in these. The fact has no need 
 of proof, but it requires explanation. To find 
 this, without dwelling too much on questions of 
 regulation, let us follow a law proposed in the 
 principal phases of its discussion ; and give an 
 jaccount of the manner, in which the business is 
 conducted in France and in England.* 
 
 * Two works should be constantly under the eye of those, 
 ■who engage in the important question of regulating deliberative 
 assemblies : one, very ably translated into French by M. 
 
LETTER XIX. ^11 
 
 The sittings of our chamber of deputies opea 
 with reading the minutes of the preceding day : 
 and these minutes contain an analysis of every 
 speech, instead of being confined, like the journals 
 of the house of commons, to the results of the 
 deliberations, and the acts that may constitute 
 the law. Here we have a double loss of time, 
 first in the useless prolixity of what is read, and 
 next because a punctilious self-regard, finding the 
 
 Pichon, is the Parliamentary Manual of Mr. Jefferson. This 
 is a summary of English experience sanctioned by American 
 sagacity. The other is the Tactique des Assemblees legislatives : 
 a work, in which M. Duraont has displayed the most philoso- 
 phic arguments in the most sprightly manner. We there find 
 the regulations drawn up by the author for the representative 
 council of the republic of Geneva. These are founded or the 
 practices of the English parliament, with some improvements 
 in certain particulars. On presenting this work to the council, 
 of which he is a member, be adopted the ingenious idea of 
 requesting, that it should be subjected to the forms of delibe- 
 ration traced out in it ; in other words, that in discussing the 
 plan, it should be taken as already adopted. The trial was so 
 satisfactory, that the regulations, which were unanimously 
 adopted at once, are become habitual with the citizens of 
 Geneva. They are followed in all the committees, in all the 
 meetings to which the spirit of association gives rise : and this 
 practice has introduced into the conduct of affairs remarkable 
 promptness and regxilariiy. 
 
312 LETTER XIX. 
 
 secretaries have badly expressed its thoughts, is 
 sufficient to produce a debate on a single word, 
 while the order of the day stands still. But this 
 is not the least inconvenience of these analyses : 
 for, fastidious in times of tranquillity, they would 
 become dangerous in a period of disturbance or 
 revolution. When the public papers give an 
 account of the debates, it is at the risk and peril 
 of the editors: the deputies always have it in 
 their power, to disavow what is printed in their 
 names. But minutes approved by the chamber 
 acquire an official character ; and every orator is 
 presumed to adopt even the slightest expressions 
 that are ascribed to him. Every deputy sus- 
 pected by the dominant faction would here have 
 his indictment prepared before-hand : it would be 
 an arsenal, where the strongest would find wea- 
 pons ready forged, to crush the minority. 
 
 Then comes a report from the committee of 
 petitions. Here one, two, three orators in suc- 
 cession ascend the tribune, and set forth, that 
 Mr. such a one asks permission to marry his 
 sister-in-law; that another desires a tax on use- 
 less dogs; that a third imparts to the chamber a 
 
LETTER XIX. 313 
 
 new plan of administration and finance, and that 
 there is something good in his ideas; that a fourth 
 is desirous of obtaining the riband of the legion of 
 honour; that a fifth proposes to decree the sur- 
 name of well-beloved to the late king, on which the 
 committee gravely demands passing to the order 
 of the day, because his majesty has already re- 
 ceived from his people that of desired. And the 
 most sprightly of nations, the most sensible to the 
 slightest shades of the ridiculous, has been listen- 
 ing patiently for ten years to such paltry things, 
 without reflecting, that human life is too short, 
 thus to waste the time of a deliberative assembly. 
 When the subject of a petition is more serious, 
 the consequences of our system are scarcely more 
 satisfactory; for referring them to the ministers, 
 depositing them in the office of information, 
 and passing to the order of the day, are only 
 three kinds of death to the petition more or less 
 honourable. 
 
 Would you propose then, you will say, to sup- 
 press the right of petition, as it is exercised in 
 France? Assuredly no. As long as the right of 
 proposing laws is withheld from the chambers, it 
 
314 LETTLK XIX. 
 
 is better to give it indiscFiminately to all who 
 choose to put a petition into the post-office, than 
 to deprive the citizens of all means of demanding 
 them: but what reason points out would be, to 
 give this right to the chambers, on which it has 
 devolved by all the rules of common sense, and to 
 make the deputies the organs of the wishes of the 
 citizens. 
 
 This is in fact what takes place in England. 
 Every petition must be presented by a member, 
 who may make it the subject of a motion, or lay 
 it on the table and merely desire it to be read, 
 according to circumstances. Thus the houses are 
 guarded against frivolous and intemperate peti- 
 tions, and just claims are sure of finding advocates. 
 Farther, it is by no means presumed, that the pe- 
 titioners have a right to cause the parliament to de- 
 liberate on the subject of their demand : the peti- 
 tion is considered only as the ground of the motion 
 made by this or that member, to whom alone it 
 belongs to commence any proceeding on it: and 
 thus, as I have said before, the true meaning to be 
 attached to the right of petitioning in England is 
 that of meeting to deliberate on grievances, which 
 
LETT E a XIX. 315 
 
 persons may be desirous of laying before parlia- 
 ment or the king. 
 
 Collective petitions, proceeding from a body of 
 men, or from a county, which are rejected by our 
 laws, are those on the contrary, which the English 
 value most, as they express the opinion of num- 
 bers: and it is seldom, that a measure of any 
 importance is adopted by parliament, without its 
 being urged and encouraged, if not compelled to 
 it, by the number and unanimity of petitions pre- 
 sented. We then see members arrive bendins: 
 under the weight of those with which they are 
 loaded; and, dropping at the door a vast roll, one 
 of the ends of which they hold in the hand, they 
 proceed up to the table, spreading before the eyes 
 of the house the long strip of parchment, covered 
 with fifty or sixty thousand signatures. This is 
 a kind of pleasantry sanctioned by custom. It is 
 also the practice for a member, who presents a 
 petition, to seat himself on the treasury bench 
 while it is reading. This point of form gives rise to 
 strange approximations. Thus I have sometimes 
 seen sir Francis Burdett by the side of lord Castle- 
 reagh, and Mr. Hume by that of Mr. Vansittart. 
 
316 LETTER XIX. 
 
 But let us return to the course of our proposi- 
 tions of laws. A communication from the govern- 
 ment is announced. The door opens, and a 
 minister, or a commissioner from the king, comes 
 forward, preceded by two tipstaves, ascends the 
 tribune, and reads a long exposition of motives, 
 precisely resembling the preamble of a rescript of 
 a Roman emperor : as if, in a free government, 
 the best explanation of the motives of a legislative 
 measure were not to be found in the speeches 
 themselves of the authors of it, and their answers 
 to the objections of its opponents. Here too is 
 another waste of time. Why deliver from the 
 tribune a work composed at leisure, corrected, 
 and written out fairly, which it would be so 
 natural to send at once to the Moniteur, where 
 every deputy might read it more at his ease, and 
 with more attention? 
 
 I ought also to point out to you from the begin- 
 ning, among the principal causes of the slowness 
 of our deliberations, this veg2i\ ifiitiative; which, 
 inspiring the ministers, and almost the king him- 
 self, with an author's affection for the slightest 
 particulars in the project of a law, induces the 
 
LETTER XIX. 317 
 
 srovernment orators, to contend for minutiae of no 
 importance, and consider the slightest amend- 
 ment on a bridge to be built, or a marsh to be 
 drained, as a check on the crown. 
 
 The project of a law is presented : what be- 
 comes of it then ? It is sent to the committees. 
 These committees, as you know, are composed 
 from the whole chamber, divided by lot into nine 
 sections, each of which elects one of the members 
 of the committee appointed to examine the pro- 
 ject of a law; and this committee, in its turn, 
 selects one of its number to draw up the report. 
 Let us stop here a moment, for never did a more 
 irrational contrivance fetter the progress, and 
 falsify the natural character of a legislative dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 There seem to be but two modes of deciding a 
 question, reason and force. Our regulation, in 
 concert with judge Bridoye, has invented a third, 
 which is chance. In fact, it may happen, that 
 the distribution of the members in the committee 
 is such, as for the opinions of the majority of the 
 assembly to be those of the minority in the com- 
 mittee ; so that the committee is certain before- 
 
tl8 LITTER XIX. 
 
 hand of its labours being in vain, and that its 
 report will be rejected at once by the chamber.* 
 It may happen too, particularly in a question of 
 local interest, that all the deputies acquainted 
 with the facts, and capable of elucidating the dis- 
 cussion, are concentrated in the same section; so 
 that of the nine members of the committee, there 
 will only be one who knows any thing of the 
 business. 
 
 But what has this committee to do? Has it 
 been informed, by any preceding debate, of the 
 
 * Suppose an assembly composed of 450 members, 242 of 
 whom support the ministry, and 208 vote with the opposition. 
 Each of the nine sections will consist of fifty members, l^fow 
 suppose the minority of 208 equally distributed among eight 
 sections, it will form a majority in each, and the 242 minis- 
 terial votes will be distributed as follows ; 
 
 Minority of 24 in each of eight sections - 192 
 Unanimity in the ninth ------ 50 
 
 242 
 
 Of nine members of the committee, then the majority will 
 nominate only one. 
 
 (This is an extreme and highly improbable case. But it is 
 very possible for the opposition members to have a majority 
 in five of the nine sections, in which case they will nominate 
 five of the members of the committee, so that the majority of 
 the committee will be in a minority in the house. Tr.) 
 
LEITER XIX. 319 
 
 difficulties that are to be solved ? Is it charged 
 with one of those particular businesses of inquiry 
 or composition, which are better executed rouiid- 
 a table covered with green cloth, than amid the 
 passions of the chamber ; while, on the contrary, 
 the grand features of a legislative measure cannot 
 be decided with advantage, except in a general 
 discussion? Has it any power to compel the 
 appearance of witnesses, and to ascertain facts ? 
 By no means. What then will it do? It will 
 meet, talk, be exposed to the intrigues of parties 
 and solicitations of the ministry : weeks will pass 
 away, before a decisive majority declares itself 
 in it : at length it will name a reporter, who, in 
 a longer or shorter time, in proportion to his 
 readiness, will come and present to the chamber 
 the result of its labours. And these labours in 
 general will be nothing but a collection of general 
 positions, in which deputies, who are strangers 
 to the point in question, and consequently ought 
 to hold their tongues, will have indulged them- 
 selves, as an excuse for making a speech. All 
 this time the chamber remains idle- 
 On the report being presented, there is another 
 
320 LETTER XIX. 
 
 waste of time. The deputy presenting it tires 
 himself with reading a long abstract, to which no 
 one listens, or to which, at least, it is silly to 
 listen ; for it would be more rational to employ 
 the morning in any thing else, and wait till the 
 report is printed, to meditate upon it at leisure. 
 
 The reading finished, deputies from each side 
 rush to the table, to secure the privilege of speak- 
 ing for, against, or on the minister's proposal. 
 The most nimble, or the most robust, obtain the 
 first ranks : others, less fortunate, content them- 
 selves with a twentieth, thirtieth, perhaps a for- 
 tieth or fiftieth turn. Do they know what they 
 will have to say when their turn comes ? Can 
 they tell whether the arguments that recur to 
 their minds, will not have been repeated ten times 
 over, before it is their turn to speak? Do they 
 know how far the debates will have changed their 
 way of thinking? Not in the least. But no mat- 
 ter; they will have the pleasure of speaking, or 
 at least they will have testified their good will : 
 and if the closure of the debate prevent their ad- 
 mission to the tribune, they will print what they 
 would have said, or what they might have said. 
 
LKTTKK XIX. 321 
 
 if the discussion had continued till their turn 
 came, and their opinions had remained un- 
 changed. 
 
 The general discussion begins ; and now writ- 
 ten speeches, placing superior talents and medi- 
 ocrity on a level, occasion delays without mea- 
 sure. A man endued with good sense, but 
 destitute of oratorical talents, who, if these 
 readings were prohibited, would confine himself 
 to giving some useful advice in a few words, as 
 the articles came under discussion, cannot resist 
 the temptation of seeing in print, in the Momtew\ 
 a morsel of his composition, or that of some 
 charitable friend. 
 
 Still it would be nothing, if all these speeches 
 were read in suitable order : but the custom of 
 calling alternately on the orators entered for and 
 against the project, and that of allowing the 
 ministers to speak whenever tliey require it, 
 frequently give to a debate the most incoherent 
 character. 
 
 An orator has written a speech in answer to 
 one of those delivered the preceding day: but 
 on the following day comes another, by which 
 
 Y 
 
^%% LETTER XIX. 
 
 the question is totally altered. What will our 
 orator do now? Will he sacrifice the offspring 
 of his lucubrations? This would be too cruel. 
 He will utter a few sentences extempore, to tack 
 his discourse well or ill to that preceding it; 
 then, drawing his paper out of his pocket, he 
 will read his reflections, that no longer answer to 
 any thing, and throw a deadly frigidity ove"r the 
 sitting. Another, on the contrary, will offer with 
 the utmost simplicity, as an excuse for not 
 ascending the tribune, his having left his opinion 
 behind him in the drawer of his bureau, or the 
 pocket of his great coat. In truth, I know not 
 why we are accused of a turbulent vivacity : I 
 am confounded, on the contrary, at our gravity 
 and patience. Never would an assembly of 
 Americans or Englishmen be prevailed on to 
 listen to such a long series of written disserta- 
 tions, the monotony of which is broken only by 
 interruptions and invectives. 
 
 The discussion of the articles, immediately fol- 
 lows that of the whole of the law, so that these 
 two discussions form in reality only one. Here 
 written speeches are less frequent, and the de-^ 
 
LF.TTF.U XJX. 323 
 
 bates become more animated and interesting. 
 But hence arises another inconvenience. After 
 spending long days in useless readings, it is 
 during the sitting, and amid the storm of irri- 
 tated passions, that amendments are to be con- 
 ceived on the spur of the moment; whence it 
 follows, that they are for the most part badly 
 contrived, and as badly drawn up. And, were 
 they not, little would be gained : for the vote 
 of the law succeeding to the discussion of the 
 articles without any interval, there is no time to 
 contemplate it as a whole, and examine whether 
 the amendments, though reasonable in them- 
 selves, do not render the law absurd, by de- 
 ranging its general economy. 
 
 According to the letter of the charter, each 
 amendment should be referred to a committee, 
 there to be discussed : but of two evils it was 
 requisite to choose the least, and necessity has 
 led to setting aside an article, that would have 
 rendered all deliberation impossible. 
 
 The last stage of the discussion having arrived, 
 nothing remains but to proceed to the ballot, 
 such being our mode of reckoning votes. Here, 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 LETTKK XIX, 
 
 at least, it would seem no loss of time is to ht 
 apprehended : but this is far from being the case. 
 The forms of calling on the members by name 
 [appel nominal'] and examining the ballot [depou- 
 Hkmerd du scrutin] are such, that we have found 
 means of employing three quarters of an hour in 
 a process, that would be finished in ten minutes, if 
 we adopted the balloting boxes used in England, 
 in clubs where secrecy of voting is practised. 
 And suppose the appel nominal to be demanded 
 on several articles of a projected law, which may 
 very easily happen, whole days would be spent 
 in counting black and white balls. It would be 
 too much, w^ere our lives as long as those of the 
 patriarchs. 
 
 ;' But will a day never arrive, when our deputies, 
 shaking off this deplorable timidity, will be proud 
 of displaying their opinions in the face of their 
 country ; and when, far from concealing them- 
 selves behind the curtain of a ballot, a curtain 
 indeed easily lifted, they will take care, as in 
 England, to publish a list of the majority and 
 minority on every important question? In France, 
 vou will tell me, public voting would be too 
 
I.IlTILR XIX. 
 
 320 
 
 favourable to men in power. — At first, perhaps 
 it would : in the course of time, I doubt it much. 
 What kind of liberty must it be, that has no am- 
 bition but that of filching a few laws by the help 
 of a mysterious urn, without ever acquiring: the 
 faculty of forming men and citizens? 
 
 We have followed the different phases of the 
 discussion of a projected law in the chamber of 
 deputies : we will leave the orators of the govern- 
 ment, to accompany it to the chamber of peers, 
 where, oblige^ to sift over again beyond the 
 power of mortal strength arguments already ex- 
 hausted by the debates of the other chamber, 
 they will gather the bitter fruits of the regal 
 initiative. But I must point out to you one 
 deficiency in our constitutional laws, which, 
 under various circumstances, may lead not only 
 to interminable delays, but to serious dangers : 
 this is the total absence of means of communi- 
 cation between the chambers. Suppose one of 
 them should insist on an amendment, which the 
 other should obstinately reject. Here the wheels 
 of . government would be completely stopped: 
 an inconvenience that would be avoided, if we 
 
326 LETTER XIX. 
 
 had, like the English parliament, those free con- 
 ferences of the painted chamber, where commis- ; 
 sioners from both branches of the legislature 
 adjust and obviate differences by reciprocal con- 
 cessions. 
 
 Now let us take a rapid view of the order of 
 debates in the house of commons : we shall meet, 
 no doubt, with some caprices, and some abuses ; 
 but in every thing essential to the progress of 
 business we shall find promptitude, method, and 
 simplicity, where with us we have seen nothing 
 but dilatoriness and confusion. . 
 
 The house of commons has two modes of ex- 
 erting its influence on the concerns of the coun- 
 try, as an integral part of the legislative body, by 
 passing laws, and as a grand national council by 
 addresses to the king, and by resolutions. These 
 resolutions may be either a general announce- 
 ment of an intention, that will subsequently appear 
 in the shape of a bill ; or a declaration of certain 
 principles, and the manisfestation of certain sen- ' 
 timents, as for instance the celebrated motion of 
 Mr. Dunning, in 1780: *' that the influence of 
 the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought 
 
LETTER XIX. 327 
 
 to be diminished." But as what concerns us is 
 to compare the proceedings we follow in the 
 discussion of laws with those consecrated by 
 long experience in England, let us confine our- 
 selves to pursuing the progress of a bill from its 
 origin to its adoption. 
 
 ; The first step toward presenting a bill is, to 
 obtain leave of the house. The member with 
 whom it originates, whether he belong to the 
 ministry or the opposition, begins therefore with 
 giving notice, that on such a day he will move for 
 leave to bring in a bill, the purpose of which he 
 mentions. This formality is strictly observed, 
 that the house may not be taken unawares, and 
 that the antagonists of the bill may be prepared 
 to oppose it. In general, a great deal of courtesy 
 takes place in these preliminaries, and we are 
 involuntarily reminded of the words of the 
 English grenadiers at the battle of Fontenoy : 
 *' Gentlemen of the French guards, fire first.'' 
 From the beginning any member of the house 
 may declare, that he will support or oppose the 
 bill to be presented, according as it shall or shall 
 not include this or th^.t clause, which he may 
 
328 LETTtR XIX. 
 
 deem desirable ; and in pursuance of this decla- 
 ration the partisans of the bill, its swpporters 
 according to the received phrase, have it in their 
 choice, either to modify it, or to contest the 
 point. You see already how much delay and 
 useless discussion may often be spared by this 
 simple mode of proceeding : for, if it be a minister 
 or a member of weight belonging to the majority, 
 who declares on what conditions the bill will 
 receive his assent, the member with whom it 
 originates will know at the outset what he may 
 reckon upon ; and, in concert with his party, 
 determines to make or refuse the concessions 
 demanded, according as he has most at heart the 
 result of the division or the effect the debate will 
 produce. 
 
 On the day appointed, he who brings in the 
 bill, unfolds its motives ; he is seconded by a 
 member of the same party; the bill is laid on the 
 table ; and the speaker puts the question, whether 
 it shall be read the first time. The lists are then 
 open, and the adversaries of the bill may either 
 oppose the reading directly, or put it off by moving 
 for an adjournment. >iK.'v^*|**g mu j*!si ./loug^yp 
 
LKTIF.R XIX. 32tt 
 
 It is not usual for a debate to take place at the 
 first reading of a bill ; or at least the general 
 principle of it only is then considered : for it 
 seems by no means reasonable, to combat the 
 particulars of a bill that has not yet been read; 
 and it would be a waste of time, to endeavour to 
 amend what may perhaps be rejected altogether 
 the next moment. 
 
 Accordingly the second reading is the proper 
 field of battle. The bill has then been printed; 
 it is known to the whole house ; and the period is 
 arrived, to attack it as a whole, or to modify it by 
 amendments, since there is then a presumption, 
 that it will be adopted. 
 
 After the second reading too it is usual, to send 
 the bill to a committee, either special, or of the 
 whole house. This however is merely a custom, 
 to which there are many exceptions. Important 
 propositions are sometimes discussed in a general 
 committee immediately after the first reading; 
 and there are even certain motions, that can be 
 made only in a committee. Sometimes too it 
 happens, particularly when local measures are in 
 question, that the supporters of the bill themselves 
 
330 LETTER XIX. 
 
 desire it to be sent directly to a comHiittee, either 
 t& draw it up in a more correct form, or to collect' 
 facts, and hear the parties interested in it. f 
 
 Special committees are either composed of a 
 certain number of members named exclusively by 
 the house, or free to all members who choose to 
 be present at the deliberation. In the former 
 ease they are called select committees, in the latter 
 »pen committees. Sometimes too the nature of 
 the subject requires, that what passes in the 
 committee should be kept secret, and then the 
 members are sworn to secrecy.. 
 
 iThe committees may be elected in various 
 ways : either by ballot, or by presenting a list in 
 the usual shape of a motion, or lastly, in the case 
 of contested elections, conformably to an ingenious 
 mode prescribed by a particular law. But most 
 commonly the proposer of a committee gives a 
 list of the persons of whom he wishes it to be 
 composed. Other members, if it appear requisite, 
 propose the addition of this or that name to the 
 list: and in general a sense of decorum is suf^ ^ 
 ficient, to indicate to him who presents it, that it 
 ought to contain some members of consequence 
 
4 . 
 LETTER- XIX. ' 331 
 
 ill the party opposite to his own. Besides, a 
 previous debate having disclosed to the house 
 who are best acquainted with the subject, there 
 is reason to presume, that the selection will be 
 made with discernment. It is an established rule, 
 not to include in a special committee, any mem- 
 bers, who have argued for rejecting the pro- 
 posal altogether, but such only as desire it to be 
 amended. In fact, a man who rejects a pro- 
 posal entirely, does not seem calculated to amend 
 its different parts. 
 
 Observe how much wisdom there is in these 
 parliamentary forms ; and at the same time how 
 free they are from stiffness, and easy to be ac- 
 commodated to the infinite variety of human 
 affairs. Accordingly, it is in fact in the com- 
 mittees of the house of commons, that all those 
 questions respecting regulations [questions admini- 
 strativcs] are discussed, which with us are decided 
 in the office of a minister, or in the privacy of a 
 council of state. It is in the presence of the 
 public, or at least of the parties concerned and 
 their counsel, that the committees examine wit- 
 nesses, consult persons of science and experience. 
 
3^2 I Krjf;R XIX. 
 
 aad discuss affairsof every kind referred to them; 
 affairs so numerous, that sometimes a dozen com- 
 mittees, occupied on different concerns, may be 
 seen assembled in the same room. These com- 
 mittees meet at noon, and their sittings ought to 
 close at lour o'clock, when those of the house are 
 opened for reading prayers, but they receive an 
 order to prolong them. As soon as the business 
 of a committee is finished, the chairman presents 
 himself at the bar, and at the call of the Speaker 
 comes forward and lays on the table the report 
 with which he is charged. Nothing can be mere 
 simple and speedy. :; isa 
 
 ..;, That this system however is spotted with many 
 aJ3Uses is incontestable, as numerous complaints 
 bear witness. But at least there stands a remedy by 
 the side of the evil : and if corruption sometimes 
 creep into the committees, complaint may be 
 immediately made to resound through the house, 
 for injured interests never fail to find an advocate, 
 -r, ;Wlien the house is formed into a general com- 
 mittee, the mace is laid under the table; the 
 Speaker quits his seat, which he alone has a right 
 to occupy, and appoints a teujporary president. 
 
I.F.Tir.R XIX. 
 
 333 
 
 who takes his place at the table.' 'A (\imiliar dis- 
 cussion then takes place, in which the debaters 
 are freed from a rigid observance of the rul^s 
 adopted in sittings of the house. A person may 
 speak on a question as often as he thinks proper, 
 propose amendments, and suggest alterations in 
 the style. A member, who would not venture to 
 make a set speech, does not hesitate to make 
 known a fact, or to request an explanation. Sucti 
 a debate has all the ease of conversation. Ami 
 here particularly is perceived the advantage of 
 every member speaking in his place : as soon as 
 he has finished what he had to say, he sits down, 
 without thinking himself obliged to beat his brains 
 for a peroration. How often, on the other hand, 
 have I seen our deputies as it were chained to the 
 tribune, because they did not dare to descend 
 from it, till they had hit upon some brilliant and 
 sonorous conclusion for their speech! 
 - When the general committee has finished its 
 examination of the question submitted to it, the 
 Speaker resumes his seat, and a report of the 
 ^amendments adopted by the committee is made, 
 while the house continues to sit. This report. 
 
334 LETTER XIX. ' 
 
 addressed, as we may say, by the house to the 
 house itself, may seem whimsical at first view: 
 but we are soon aware how essential this custom 
 is, to avoid a surprise, and maintain the gravity of 
 debate. 
 
 At length the bill comes to a third reading; and 
 all the members having had time to review it, and 
 examine the modifications it has undergone in the 
 course of the debates, there is no fear, as with us, 
 of the serious inconvenience I have noticed above, 
 that of voting blindfold on a proposed law, the 
 nature of which has often been changed by 
 amendments. 
 
 You see how simple and philosophical this 
 course is : it is actually the way, in which the 
 human mind proceeds. Do we trace out a plan^ 
 or propose any business whatever? we begin by 
 considering the principle; we then examine the 
 particular parts ; and lastly we review what we 
 have done as a whole. Such is the object of the 
 three debates. ' i 
 
 But if it be acknowledged, that this mode of 
 deliberation is the wisest, it is no less certain, 
 that it is also the most speedy. The numerous 
 
LETTER XIX. 335 
 
 trials, to which a proposition is subjected before 
 it is concluded on, calm the passions, and prevent 
 self-love from being hurt : no one is eager t-o claim 
 the right of speaking, when all are sure of haiving 
 more than one opportunity of expressing their 
 sentiments ; talents of every kind, merit of ail 
 descriptions, find a place suited to them, and 
 there is no hurry on any point. If a building 
 have many places of egress, the crowd will b^e 
 divided, and glide out without embarrassment: 
 open but one door, let it be ever so wide, yo;a 
 you will soon find it obstructed. You are awar« 
 however, that in urgent cases the three readings 
 of a bill may take place on the same day. 
 
 The mode of collecting votes in the house of 
 commons has in it something whimsical. It is 
 one of those old traditionary customs, that yon 
 meet at every step in England, notwithstanding 
 the principle of melioration is there so vivacious 
 and energetic. The Speaker, having put the 
 question, desires those who are for adopting it to 
 say ayCt and the opponents to say no, "The at/es 
 have it:" says the Speaker, when he judges, from 
 the, sound of the voices, that the majority declares 
 
336 LKTTKU XIX. 
 
 for the affirmative. If no one object to this, the 
 decision becomes a law. And frequently, when 
 measures are proposed to which there is no oppo- 
 sition, we hear repeatedly murmured, with a hol- 
 low voice, and in a kind of established chaunt, 
 which is uninterrupted by any answer : ** Let 
 those who are for the question say aye, those who 
 are of the contrary opinion say no. The ayes 
 have it." They are so many laws adopted. But 
 the minority, however small in number, has always 
 a right to demand a division. For this purpose a 
 member rises, and, contradicting the Speaker, 
 declares, even if he alone had voted in the nega- 
 tive, that the noes have it. The house is then 
 divided : the members of one party go into the 
 lobby, those of the other remain in their places; 
 and two tellers, nominated by each party, count 
 the votes. 
 
 The Speaker does not vote, except when the 
 house is equally divided ; and it was his vote alone, 
 as you know, that decided for the impeachment 
 of lord Melville. In a general committee, as the 
 Speaker does not execute the office of president, 
 he is allowed to vote : but he refrains from it, on 
 
LETTER XIX. 337 
 
 a conviction, that impartiality is his first duty; 
 and availing himself of the privilege of remaining 
 neuter, a privilege granted to him alone, he retires 
 to his seat while the votes are counted, as to 
 a rock secure from storms. 
 
 No doubt you will charge me with having 
 dwelt on these particulars of regulation with too 
 much pedantry ; but on this point, I think I can 
 justify myself. As in courts of justice forms are 
 the surest protection of the weak, in a deliberative 
 assembly regulations are the best, we may often 
 say the only, protection of the minority. And if 
 it be certain, that without freedom of debate the 
 most beautiful written constitutions would only 
 be useless scraps of paper, we are led to acknow- 
 ledge, that nothing in a representative govern- 
 ment merits more serious attention, than the 
 methods intended to assure the greatest possible 
 latitude to this freedom. 
 
 But there is another point of view, under which 
 the forms of deliberation m the assembly of re- 
 presentatives acquire a still greater importance : 
 it is the influence they exert on the nation by the 
 
 z 
 
S3S LETTER XIX. 
 
 authority of example. The elective chamber is 
 an object, to which all citizens aspire : the coun- 
 try, where it is not so, would be politically 
 defunct : it is natural therefore, that men's man- 
 ners should be modelled by what passes in this 
 assembly. 
 
 If the business there be conducted with order, 
 simplicity, and promptitude, the same qualities 
 will not fail to be diffused through the nation ; 
 the spirit of association will be progressive ; men 
 will be accustomed to treat of their concerns in 
 common ; and the talent of debate will soon 
 become familiar to all the citizens. If, on the 
 contrary, the legislative assembly exhibit a sad 
 example of dilatoriness, confusion, or violence, 
 the fatal contagion will spread over the country, 
 and public morals be stifled in the cradle. Igno- 
 rant of the forms of a regular deliberation, wearied 
 by the time lost in vain discussions, where all 
 speak at once without arriving at any conclusion, 
 the citizens will keep apart from each other, con- 
 centrate themselves in the narrow circle of selfish- 
 ness, and indolently leave to government those 
 
LETTER XIX. 3S9 
 
 interests, which they ought themselves to defend 
 and protect. 
 
 Whatever be the government under which we 
 live, when such is the disposition of men's minds, 
 we must renounce the idea of liberty. In nations, 
 as Avith individuals, freedom consists in managing 
 cur affairs ourselves. 
 
 TJIE EXD. 
 
 Ilowlett and limnmer, PHnten, 
 ID. t'tUU .Ureet.SjUo. 
 
RETUR^tTO 
 
 lOAN DEM