re,
insists that property shall be the qualification for power, and the
whole scope of its laws and customs is to promote and favour the
accumulation of wealth and the perpetuation of property. We cannot
alter, therefore, the disposition of property in this country without we
change the national character. Far from the present age being hostile to
the supremacy of property, there has been no period of our history where
property has been more esteemed, because there has been no period when
the nation has been so industrious.

Believing, therefore, that no change will occur in the disposition of
property in this country, I cannot comprehend how our government can
become more democratic. The consequence of our wealth is an aristocratic
constitution; the consequence of our love of liberty is an aristocratic
constitution founded on an equality of civil rights. And who can deny
that an aristocratic constitution resting on such a basis, where the
legislative, and even the executive office may be obtained by every
subject of the realm, is, in fact, a noble democracy? The English
constitution, faithful to the national character, secures to all the
enjoyment of property and the delights of freedom. Its honours are a
perpetual reward of industry; every Englishman is toiling to obtain
them; and this is the constitution to which every Englishman will always
be devoted, except he is a Whig.

In the next Chapter I shall discuss the second proposition.

CHAPTER VI.

_Results of Whiggism_

THE Tories assert that the whole property of the country is on their
side; and the Whigs, wringing their hands over lost elections and
bellowing about 'intimidation,' seem to confess the soft impeachment.
Their prime organ also assures us that every man with 500L. per annum is
opposed to them. Yet the Whig-Radical writers have recently published,
by way of consolation to their penniless proselytes, a list of some
twenty Dukes and Marquises, who, they assure us, are devoted to
'Liberal' principles, and whose revenues, in a paroxysm of economical
rhodomontade, they assert, could buy up the whole income of the rest
of the hereditary Peerage. The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to
reconcile this anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn
finances of their faction in general. Now, this little tract on the
'Spirit of Whiggism' may perhaps throw some light upon this perplexing
state of affairs. For myself, I see in it only a fres