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held , is conferred upon him entirely by the institutions of society . It is factitious ; and it must be admitted ^ that in the same proportion , it is unjust to the rest of the people . There is an aristocracy of nature s ordaining ; the aristocracy of talent , of virtue , of accomplishments and manners , and of wealth , against which no such objection lies . The
distinctions of merit are but just to individual exertion , and they are beneficial to the whole people . There is the descent , too , of a good name , and of property , from father to son , which is the order of Providence ; a special premium bestowed by Heaven upon good conduct . But that feudal aristocracy , that transmission of hereditary honour , protected property , and actual power , from generation to generation , which obtains in
Europe , is , in theory , most manifestly unjust . It takes away from individual respectability and influence , to bestow them upon a favoured class . It depresses the many , that it may raise the few . It tends to deprive
virtue of its just reward ; nay , and of its highest earthly reward ; I mean social honour , human approbation . Let it be proposed to any people to take a fifth part of their property from them to make a favoured class rich . Would they consent to it ? Would they not say , that it was depriving industry of its fair reward ? Would they not hold it to be intolerable oppression ? But is property the dearest treasure in the world ; the highest reward of good conduct , that is bestowed on earth ? Far from it . The respect of our fellow-beings is
a more valued good . There is nothing on earth which men so earnestl y and universally desire of one another , no reward of good conduct which they so eagerly covet , as respect , esteem , admiration . Now it is this special , this highest earthly treasure , which the princip \ e of a feudal aristocracy invades : it is this of which a certain amount is taken from the people , to make a particular class among them great . Nor is this all ; for it is equally true , that hereditary power is given up to this class ; and it is equally true , though it may not be so directly manifest , that property is given up to it—at least , it is manifestly garnered up and kept for the favoured class / ' —Vol . ii . p . 267—273 .
In what a noble strain of eloquence is the following passage : " For my own part , I am not ashamed to say that my sympathies are with the people , that my sympathies follow whore the mightiest interests lead . To me the multitude is a sublimer object than royal dignity or titled state . It is humanity , it is universal man , it is the being whose joys and sorrows , hopes and fears , are like my own , that I respect , and
not any mere condition of that being . And it is around this same humanity that genius , poetry , philosophy , and eloquence , have most closely entwined themselves ; it is embraced with the very fibres of every truly noble heart that ever lived . Hut not to dwell on considerations of this abstract nature , I look at facts ; and facts , too , that are
enough to stir the coldest heart that ever lived . 1 look upon this fellowbeing , man , in the aggregate and in the mass , and I see him the victim of ages of oppression and injustice . I take his part ; the tears o £ my sympathy mingle with the tears of his Buffering ; and I care not what aristocratic ridicule the avowal may bring upon me . My blood boila in ray veins , and I will not try to still their throhbings , when I think of the banded tyrannies of the earth—the Asiatic , the Assyrian , Egyptian European—which have been united to crush down all human interests
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The Old World and the New . 605
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No . 118 , 2 S
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 605, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/17/
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