which are so repugnant to their vanity, another struggle would follow hard upon their victory.  It would not be very long before the middle classes in their turn would be looked upon by the people as a sort of noblesse; they would be a sorry kind of noblesse, it is true, but their wealth and privileges would seem so much the more hateful in the eyes of the people because they would have a closer vision of these things.  I do not say that the nation would come to grief in the struggle, but society would perish anew; for the day of triumph of a suffering people is always brief, and involves disorders of the worst kind.  There would be no truce in a desperate strife arising out of an inherent or acquired difference of opinion among the electors.  The less enlightened and more numerous portion would sweep away social inequalities, thanks to a system in which votes are reckoned by count and not by weight.  Hence it follows that a government is never more strongly organized, and as a consequence is never more perfect than when it has been established for the protection of Privilege of the most restricted kind.  By Privilege I do not at this moment mean the old abuses by which certain rights were conceded to a few, to the prejudice of the many; no, I am using it to express the social circle of the governing class.  But throughout creation Nature has confined the vital principle within a narrow space, in order to concentrate its power; and so it is with the body politic.  I will illustrate this thought of mine by examples.  Let us suppose that there are a hundred peers in France, there are only one hundred causes of offence.  Abolish the peerage, and all the wealthy people will constitute the privileged class; instead of a hundred, you will have ten thousand, instead of removing class distinctions, you have merely widened the mischief.  In fact, from the people’s point of view, the right to live without working is in itself a privilege.  The unproductive consumer is a robber in their eyes.  The only work that they understand has palpable results; they set no value on intellectual labor—­the kind of labor which is the principal source of wealth to them.  So by multiplying causes of offence in this way, you extend the field of battle; the social war would be waged on all points instead of being confined within a limited circle; and when attack and resistance become general, the ruin of a country is imminent.  Because the rich will always be fewer in number, the victory will be to the poor as soon as it comes to actual fighting.  I will throw the burden of proof on history.

“The institution of Senatorial Privilege enabled the Roman Republic to conquer the world.  The Senate preserved the tradition of authority.  But when the equites and the novi homines had extended the governing classes by adding to the numbers of the Patricians, the State came to ruin.  In spite of Sylla, and after the time of Julius Caesar, Tiberius raised it into the Roman Empire; the system