marked out for destruction: tell the people that they are
attacking you in attacking the three holes in the wall, and that
they shall never get rid of the three holes in the wall, till
they have got rid of you; that a hereditary peerage and a
representative assembly, can co-exist only in name, and that, if
they will have a real House of Peers, they must be content with a
mock House of Commons." This, I say, is the advice given to the
Lords by those who call themselves the friends of aristocracy.
That advice so pernicious will not be followed, I am well
assured; yet I cannot but listen to it with uneasiness. I cannot
but wonder that it should proceed from the lips of men who are
constantly lecturing us on the duty of consulting history and
experience. Have they never heard what effects counsels like
their own, when too faithfully followed, have produced? Have
they never visited that neighbouring country, which still
presents to the eye, even of a passing stranger, the signs of a
great dissolution and renovation of society? Have they never
walked by those stately mansions, now sinking into decay, and
portioned out into lodging rooms, which line the silent streets
of the Faubourg St Germain? Have they never seen the ruins of
those castles whose terraces and gardens overhang the Loire?
Have they never heard that from those magnificent hotels, from
those ancient castles, an aristocracy as splendid, as brave, as
proud, as accomplished, as ever Europe saw, was driven forth to
exile and beggary, to implore the charity of hostile Governments
and hostile creeds, to cut wood in the back settlements of
America, or to teach French in the schoolrooms of London? And
why were those haughty nobles destroyed with that utter
destruction? Why were they scattered over the face of the earth,
their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks