So far as to the general state of the British Constitution.—­As to our House of Lords, the chief virtual representative of our aristocracy, the great ground and pillar of security to the landed interest, and that main link by which it is connected with the law and the crown, these worthy societies are pleased to tell us, that, “whether we view aristocracy before, or behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or publicly, it is still a monster;—­that aristocracy in France 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, it seems, that profound legislator, M. de La Fayette, describes the House of Peers);—­“that it is kept up by family tyranny and injustice;—­that there is an unnatural unfitness in aristocracy to be legislators for a nation;—­that 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;—­that the idea of an hereditary legislator is as absurd as an hereditary mathematician;—­that a body holding themselves unaccountable to anybody ought to be trusted by nobody;—­that it is continuing the uncivilized principles of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having a property in man, and governing him by a personal right;—­that aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species,” &c., &c.

As to our law of primogeniture, which with few and inconsiderable exceptions is the standing law of all our landed inheritance, and which without question has a tendency, and I think a most happy tendency, to preserve a character of consequence, weight, and prevalent influence over others in the whole body of the landed interest, they call loudly for its destruction.  They do this for political reasons that are very manifest.  They have the confidence to say, “that it is a law against every law of Nature, and Nature herself calls for its destruction.  Establish family justice, and aristocracy falls.  By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children, five are exposed.  Aristocracy has never but 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 to the House of Commons, they treat it far worse than the House of Lords or the crown have been ever treated.  Perhaps they thought they had a greater right to take this amicable freedom with those of their own family.  For many years it has been the perpetual theme of their invectives.  “Mockery, insult, usurpation,” are amongst the best names they bestow upon it.  They damn it in the mass, by declaring “that it does not arise out of the inherent rights of the people, as the National Assembly does in France, and whose name designates its original.”