This, so he urged, was the system which underlay the temporary evils of the British Constitution.

An aristocracy delegated to do its work by the mass of men was the best form of government his imagination could conceive.

It meant that property must be dominant in the system of government, that, while office should be open to all, it should be out of the reach of most.
"The characteristic essence of property," he wrote in the _Reflections_, "...

is to be unequal"; and he thought the perpetuation of that inequality by inheritance "that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself." The system was difficult to maintain, and it must be put out of the reach of popular temptation.

"Our constitution," he said in the _Present Discontents_, "stands on a nice equipoise, with sharp precipices and deep waters on all sides of it.