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form an aristocracy than lie could build an ancient castle . Of some successful soldiers and sailors , and of a host of party lawyers , lucky contractors , boroughmongers , and the like , he formed , not a venerable senate , but a privileged legislative club . And as is the head , such is the body . Why all this struggle on behalf of the old corporations ? They were not the nests of aristocracy , but the nurseries of corruption . Toryism abhors majorities wherever the people are concerned . It abhors them because they
are destructive of oligarchical power and profit . Public Trusts and Corporation Funds are the pabulum of the party . It has fattened on them , and fights for them to the death . To retain this power of the purse in the hands of a minority , and that minority with no other claim than possession , is the avowed object of the great stand made last session by the Tory peers . And what now saves the Lords from such a storm as would pelt them into submission ? The tenderness of the Whigs for every form
of aristocracy . They " stand by their order , * ' even though the influx of new men has vitiated its character . They are aristocratical to the blindest superstition . Why did they pass the Septennial Act , and why do they now refuse its repeal ? In both cases , from the fear of democracy . In their appointments , continually do they sacrifice the interests of their party to their respect for station . Look at the state in which they allow the Lord
Lieutenancies of Counties to remain ! Were Toryism so hampered , it would soon show that it prized a new partizan above an old nobleman . The Whigs attempted to restrict the suffrage to property . The Tories claim it for paupers in order to bribe them . Wherever the two principles part , the Whigs adhere to the aristocratical , the Tories to the oligarchical . The author does not remark how frequently they coincide . In the pursuit of a misty theory he overlooks a substantial affinity . Aristocracy ever tends to oligarchy ; and continued oligarchy grows into
aristocracy . Whether his laudations of Toryism rest on the one character or the other , makes little difference to us . The evil of oligarchical ascendancy is the most debasing and irritating ; that of aristocratical domination the most wide-spreading and enduring . Nor , should we convince the author of his mistake , will it be at all difficult for his ingenuity to make out as plausible a case for the one as he has done for the other . The idolater of
aristocracy is prepared to shine as the eulogist of oligarchy . In fact he is so already , at whatever expense of consistency . Forgetting the basis of his whole argument , he breaks out into tbe praise of minorities as the deposifflKes of power . " I deny that a people can govern itself . Self-government is a contradiction in terms . Whatever form a government may asssume , power must be exercised by a minority of numbers . " ( p . 208 . )
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544 Letters of Runnymede .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1836, page 544, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2661/page/20/
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