But the many are not capable of making this
calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend this
distribution.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the
most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that
which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our
weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon
avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which
attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in it,) are the
natural securities for this transmission. With us the House of Peers is
formed upon this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary
property and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third of
the legislature, and, in the last event, the sole judge of all property
in all its subdivisions. The House of Commons, too, though not
necessarily, yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greater
part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, (and they have
their chance of being amongst the best,) they are, at the very worst,
the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary
wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by
creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they are
too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming,
short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy.
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