well-disposed subject who does not wish that the perusal of his letters
should give pain to his Government. I shall write to you upon an
historical problem, and discuss with you events which happened five
hundred years ago. There could not be a more innocent subject.

I have followed your advice, and I have read, or rather re-read,
Blackstone. I studied him twenty years ago. Each time he has made upon me
the same impression. Now, as then, I have ventured to consider him (if
one may say so without blasphemy) an inferior writer, without liberality
of mind or depth of judgment; in short, a commentator and a lawyer, not
what _we_ understand by the words _jurisconsulte_ and _publiciste_. He
has, too, in a degree which is sometimes amusing, a mania for admiring
all that was done in ancient times, and for attributing to them all that
is good in his own. I am inclined to think that, if he had had to write,
not on the institutions, but on the products of England, he would have
discovered that beer was first made from grapes, and that the hop is a
fruit of the vine--rather a degenerate product, it is true, of the wisdom
of our ancestors, but as such worthy of respect. It is impossible to
imagine an excess more opposite to that of his contemporaries in France,
for whom it was enough that a thing was old for it to be bad. But enough
of Blackstone; he must make way for what I really want to say to you.

In comparing the feudal institutions in England in the period immediately
after the conquest with those of France, you find between them, not only
an analogy, but a perfect resemblance, much greater than Blackstone seems
to think, or, at any rate, chooses to say. In reality, the system in the
two countries is identical. In France, and over the whole Continent, this
system produced a caste; in England, an aristocracy. How is it that the
word _gentleman_, which in our language denotes a mere superiority of
blood, with you is now used to express a certain social position, and