Postscript.

In all the nations on the Continent, the different Orders, as they are called, of the State, are corporations, bodies politic, which have jurisdiction within themselves, and rights which they can maintain at their own hand, and privileges which mark them most distinctly, and produce such a complete separation between the different Orders, that they can no more mix than oil and water. Yet the great president Montesquieu says, that the Peerage of England is a body of Nobility; and he uses the term body in the strict sense now mentioned, as synonymous to corporation. He has repeatedly used this term to denote the second order of Frenchmen, persons of noble birth, or ennobled, (that is, vested in the privileges and distinctions of the nobly born,) united by law, and having authority to maintain their privileges. The history of France, nay of our own country, shows us that this body may enjoy all its distinctions of nobility, and that the Great Barons may enjoy the prerogatives of their baronies, although the authority of the Crown is almost annihilated.—We have no cogent reason, therefore, for thinking that they will be constantly careful to support the authority of the Crown; and much less to believe that they will, at the same time, watch over the liberties of the people. In the election of their representatives, (for the whole body of the gentlemen must appear by representation,) we must not expect that they will select such of their own number as will take care of those two essential objects of our constitution.—Equally jealous of the authority of the Crown and of the encroachments of all those who are not gentlemen, and even fearful of the assumptions of the Great Barons, the powerful individuals of their own order, they will always choose such representatives as will defend their own rights in the first place. Such persons are by no means fit for maintaining the proper authority of the Crown, and keeping the representatives of the lower classes within proper bounds.