They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the
one line, and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore,
therefore, parents to their children, and children to their parents-
relations to each other, and man to society- and to exterminate the
monster aristocracy, root and branch- the French Constitution has
destroyed the law of PRIMOGENITURESHIP. Here then lies the monster;
and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph.
Hitherto we have considered aristocracy chiefly in one point of
view. We have now to consider it in another. But whether we view it
before or behind, or sideways, or any way else, domestically or
publicly, it is still a monster.
In France aristocracy 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 I have heard M. de la Fayette describe an English House of Peers.
Let us then examine the grounds upon which the French Constitution has
resolved against having such a House in France.
Because, in the first place, as is already mentioned, aristocracy is
kept up by family tyranny and injustice.
Secondly. Because there is an unnatural unfitness in an
aristocracy to be legislators for a nation.
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