of power from such distinction, though from the weakness of mankind it
is impossible to disconnect them. What services, then, can a man render
to society to compensate for the outrage done to the dignity of our
nature when we bind ourselves to address him and his posterity with
humiliating circumlocutions, calling him most noble, most honourable,
most high, most august, serene, excellent, eminent, and so forth; when
it is more than probable that such unnatural flattery will but generate
vices which ought to consign him to neglect and solitude, or make him
the perpetual object of the finger of scorn? And does not experience
justify the observation, that where titles--a thing very rare--have been
conferred as the rewards of merit, those to whom they have descended,
far from being thereby animated to imitate their ancestor, have presumed
upon that lustre which they supposed thrown round them, and, prodigally
relying on such resources, lavished what alone was their own, their
personal reputation?

It would be happy if this delusion were confined to themselves; but,
alas, the world is weak enough to grant the indulgence which they
assume. Vice, which is forgiven in one character, will soon cease to
meet with sternness of rebuke when found in others. Even at first she
will entreat pardon with confidence, assured that ere long she will be
charitably supposed to stand in no need of it.

But let me ask you seriously, from the mode in which those distinctions
are originally conferred, is it not almost necessary that, far from
being the rewards of services rendered to the State, they should usually
be the recompense of an industrious sacrifice of the general welfare to
the particular aggrandisement of that power by which they are bestowed?
Let us even alter their source, and consider them as proceeding from the
Nation itself, and deprived of that hereditary quality; even here I