Even
to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The
strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what
he has found to belong to him and to distinguish him is one of the
securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It
operates as an instinct to secure property and to preserve communities
in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a
graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital
of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus, was the
saying of a wise and good man. It is indeed one sign of a liberal
and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial
propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who
wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been
adopted for giving a body to opinion, and permanence to fugitive
esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste
for the reality or for any image or representation of virtue, that
sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in
splendor and in honor. I do not like to see anything destroyed, any
void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land. It was,
therefore, with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries
and observations did not present to me any incorrigible vices in the
noblesse of France, or any abuse which could not be removed by a
reform very short of abolition.
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