As to their behavior to the inferior classes, they appeared to me to comport themselves towards them with good-nature, and with something more nearly approaching to familiarity than is generally practised with us in the intercourse between the higher and lower ranks of life.  To strike any person, even in the most abject condition, was a thing in a manner unknown, and would be highly disgraceful.  Instances of other ill-treatment of the humble part of the community were rare; and as to attacks made upon the property or the personal liberty of the commons, I never heard of any whatsoever from them,—­nor, whilst the laws were in vigor under the ancient government, would such tyranny in subjects have been permitted.  As men of landed estates, I had no fault to find with their conduct, though much to reprehend, and much to wish changed, in many of the old tenures.  Where the letting of their land was by rent, I could not discover that their agreements with their farmers were oppressive; nor when they were in partnership with the farmer, as often was the case, have I heard that they had taken the lion’s share.  The proportions seemed not inequitable.  There might be exceptions; but certainly they were exceptions only.  I have no reason to believe that in these respects the landed noblesse of France were worse than the landed gentry of this country,—­certainly in no respect more vexatious than the landholders, not noble, of their own nation.  In cities the nobility had no manner of power; in the country very little.  You know, Sir, that much of the civil government, and the police in the most essential parts, was not in the hands of that nobility which presents itself first to our consideration.  The revenue, the system and collection of which were the most grievous parts of the French government, was not administered by the men of the sword; nor were they answerable for the vices of its principle, or the vexations, where any such existed, in its management.

Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not without considerable faults and errors.  A foolish imitation of the worst part of the manners of England, which impaired their natural character, without substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were.  Habitual dissoluteness of manners, continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, by being covered with more exterior decorum.  They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy which has helped to bring on their ruin.  There was another error amongst them more fatal.  Those of the commons who approached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth were not fully admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reason and good policy, ought to bestow in every country,—­though I think not equally with that of other nobility.  The two kinds of aristocracy were too punctiliously kept asunder:  less so, however, than in Germany and some other nations.