al law of primogenitureship, in a family
of six children five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one
child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the
cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.

As everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or less,
the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the
aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general,
cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but
at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in governments and
courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.

With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother
contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and
by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and
orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line,
and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents to
their children, and children to their parents relations to each other,
and man to society--and to exterminate the monster aristocracy, root
and branch--the French Constitution has destroyed the law of
Primogenitureship. Here then lies the monster; and Mr. Burke, if he
pleases, may write its epitaph.

Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of view.
We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it before or
behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is
still a monster.

In France aristocracy had one feature less in its countenance than what
it has in some other countries. It did not compose a body of hereditary
legislators. It was not "a corporation of aristocracy," for such I have
heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers. Let us then
examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has resolved
against having such a House in France.

Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is
kept up by family tyranny and injustice.

Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to
be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are
corrupted at the very source. They begin life by trampling on all their
younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are
taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honour can
that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his