To avoid these difficulties, would you propose to establish a second chamber exclusively for the Third Estate? In this case, you will not have changed your present position but will have added an additional evil to it by joining the two privileged orders. By promoting this alliance, you will give them more power against the common order, but both sides will be weaker against ministerial power, which will be all-too-well aware that it will always be called upon to lay down the law to two divided peoples. Moreover, I cannot see why this new arrangement goes any nearer towards the English Constitution. You will have legitimated and sanctioned the separateness of the privileged orders; you will have divided them forever from the Nation’s interest; and you will have perpetuated the hatred or, better, the sort of endless civil war affecting every people divided between those with privileges and those with none. With our neighbors, on the contrary, all the nation’s interests are united in the House of Commons. The Lords themselves are careful to avoid forming any opposition to the common interest because it also happens to be their own, since it is the interest of their brothers, their children, and their whole families, who all rightfully belong to the Commons. But there are still those who
dare to compare the English upper house to a house that would combine the French clergy and nobility! But, however this latter may be presented, it cannot escape from the cluster of evils that are inherent in its very nature. If it is composed of genuine representatives of the clergy and nobility drawn from the whole Kingdom, it will, as has been said, divide the two interests forever, putting an end to the hope of ever forming one Nation. If the aim is to create a chamber of peers, it will either have to be made up of deputies elected by a certain number of the most distinguished families, or to avoid diverging too far from the English model it will be necessary to decide simply to make the title of peer a hereditary or
life privilege, relegating the rest of the nobility to the Third Estate. But all these suppositions simply add to the problems. They all entail a hybrid and, consequently, a monstrous House of Commons, etc. Moreover, when it pleases the King of England to create a peer, he is not obliged to choose someone from a single class of citizens. This is yet another difference, absolutely confounding all our own ideas about nobility.
To avoid these difficulties, would you propose to establish a second chamber exclusively for the Third Estate? In this case, you will not have changed your present position but will have added an additional evil to it by joining the two privileged orders. By promoting this alliance, you will give them more power against the common order, but both sides will be weaker against ministerial power, which will be all-too-well aware that it will always be called upon to lay down the law to two divided peoples. Moreover, I cannot see why this new arrangement goes any nearer towards the English Constitution. You will have legitimated and sanctioned the separateness of the privileged orders; you will have divided them forever from the Nation’s interest; and you will have perpetuated the hatred or, better, the sort of endless civil war affecting every people divided between those with privileges and those with none. With our neighbors, on the contrary, all the nation’s interests are united in the House of Commons. The Lords themselves are careful to avoid forming any opposition to the common interest because it also happens to be their own, since it is the interest of their brothers, their children, and their whole families, who all rightfully belong to the Commons. But there are still those whodare to compare the English upper house to a house that would combine the French clergy and nobility! But, however this latter may be presented, it cannot escape from the cluster of evils that are inherent in its very nature. If it is composed of genuine representatives of the clergy and nobility drawn from the whole Kingdom, it will, as has been said, divide the two interests forever, putting an end to the hope of ever forming one Nation. If the aim is to create a chamber of peers, it will either have to be made up of deputies elected by a certain number of the most distinguished families, or to avoid diverging too far from the English model it will be necessary to decide simply to make the title of peer a hereditary orlife privilege, relegating the rest of the nobility to the Third Estate. But all these suppositions simply add to the problems. They all entail a hybrid and, consequently, a monstrous House of Commons, etc. Moreover, when it pleases the King of England to create a peer, he is not obliged to choose someone from a single class of citizens. This is yet another difference, absolutely confounding all our own ideas about nobility.
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