own person
the inheritance of a whole family of children or doles out to them some
pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?

Thirdly. Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent
as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an
hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous
as an hereditary poet laureate.

Fourthly. Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to
nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Fifthly. Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of
governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having
property in man, and governing him by personal right.

Sixthly. Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human
species. By the universal economy of nature it is known, and by the
instance of the Jews it is proved, that the human species has a tendency
to degenerate, in any small number of persons, when separated from the
general stock of society, and inter-marrying constantly with each other.
It defeats even its pretended end, and becomes in time the opposite of
what is noble in man. Mr. Burke talks of nobility; let him show what
it is. The greatest characters the world have known have arisen on the
democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate
pace with democracy. The artificial Noble shrinks into a dwarf before
the Noble of Nature; and in the few instances of those (for there are
some in all countries) in whom nature, as by a miracle, has survived in
aristocracy, Those Men Despise It.--But it is time to proceed to a new
subject.

The French Constitution has reformed the condition of the clergy. It has
raised the income of the lower and middle classes, and taken from the
higher. None are now less than twelve hundred livres (fifty pounds
sterling), nor any higher than two or three thousand pounds. What will
Mr. Burke place against this? Hear what he says.

He says: "That the people of England can see without pain or grudging,
an archbishop precede a duke; they can see a Bishop of Durham, or a
Bishop of Winchester in possession of L10,000 a-year; and cannot see why
it is in worse hands than estates to a like amount, in the hands of this
earl or that squire." And Mr. Burke offers this as an example to France.

As to the first part, whether the archbishop precedes the duke, or the
duke the bishop, it is, I believe, to the people in general, somewhat
like Sternhold and Ho