[Sidenote:  Grounds of security supposed for England.]

[Sidenote:  Literary Interest.]

[Sidenote:  Moneyed interest.]

There are several who are persuaded that the same thing cannot happen in England, because here (they say) the occupations of merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers are not held as degrading situations.  I once thought that the low estimation in which commerce was held in France might be reckoned among the causes of the late Revolution; and I am still of opinion that the exclusive spirit of the French nobility did irritate the wealthy of other classes.  But I found long since, that persons in trade and business were by no means despised in France in the manner I had been taught to believe.  As to men of letters, they were so far from being despised or neglected, that there was no country, perhaps, in the universe, in which they were so highly esteemed, courted, caressed, and even feared:  tradesmen naturally were not so much sought in society, (as not furnishing so largely to the fund of conversation as they do to the revenues of the state,) but the latter description got forward every day.  M. Bailly, who made himself the popular mayor on the rebellion of the Bastile, and is a principal actor in the revolt, before the change possessed a pension or office under the crown of six hundred pound English a year,—­for that country, no contemptible provision; and this he obtained solely as a man of letters, and on no other title.  As to the moneyed men, whilst the monarchy continued, there is no doubt, that, merely as such, they did not enjoy the privileges of nobility; but nobility was of so easy an acquisition, that it was the fault or neglect of all of that description who did not obtain its privileges, for their lives at least, in virtue of office.  It attached under the royal government to an innumerable multitude of places, real and nominal, that were vendible; and such nobility were as capable of everything as their degree of influence or interest could make them,—­that is, as nobility of no considerable rank or consequence.  M. Necker, so far from being a French gentleman, was not so much as a Frenchman born, and yet we all know the rank in which he stood on the day of the meeting of the States.

[Sidenote:  Mercantile interest.]

As to the mere matter of estimation of the mercantile or any other class, this is regulated by opinion and prejudice.  In England, a security against the envy of men in these classes is not so very complete as we may imagine.  We must not impose upon ourselves.  What institutions and manners together had done in France manners alone do here.  It is the natural operation of things, where there exists a crown, a court, splendid orders of knighthood, and an hereditary nobility,—­where there exists a fixed, permanent, landed gentry, continued in greatness and opulence by the law of primogeniture, and by a protection given to family settlements,—­where there exists