g riches by their industry, purchased the
estates and country seats of the illustrious peers who had ruined
themselves by their folly and extravagance, and all the lands got by
insensible degrees into other hands.

The power of the House of Commons increased every day. The families of
the ancient peers were at last extinct; and as peers only are properly
noble in England, there would be no such thing in strictness of law as
nobility in that island, had not the kings created new barons from time
to time, and preserved the body of peers, once a terror to them, to
oppose them to the Commons, since become so formidable.

All these new peers who compose the Higher House receive nothing but
their titles from the king, and very few of them have estates in those
places whence they take their titles. One shall be Duke of D-, though he
has not a foot of land in Dorsetshire; and another is Earl of a village,
though he scarce knows where it is situated. The peers have power, but
it is only in the Parliament House.

There is no such thing here as _haute_, _moyenne_, and _basse
justice_--that is, a power to judge in all matters civil and criminal;
nor a right or privilege of hunting in the grounds of a citizen, who at
the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in his own field.

No one is exempted in this country from paying certain taxes because he
is a nobleman or a priest. All duties and taxes are settled by the House
of Commons, whose power is greater than that of the Peers, though
inferior to it in dignity. The spiritual as well as temporal Lords have
the liberty to reject a Money Bill brought in by the Commons; but they
are not allowed to alter anything in it, and must either pass or throw it
out without restriction. When the Bill has passed the Lords and is
signed by the king, then the whole nation pays, every man in proportion
to his revenue or estate, not according to his title, which would be
absurd. There is no such thing as an arbitrary subsidy or poll-tax, but
a real tax on the lands, of all which an estimate was made in the reign
of the famous King William III.

The land-tax continues still upon the same foot, though the revenue of
the lands is increased. Thus no one is tyrannised over, and every one is
easy. The feet of the peasants are not bruised by wooden shoes; they eat
white bread, are well clothed, and are not afraid of increasing their
stock of cattle, nor of tiling their houses, from any apprehen