This abuse was evidently an enormous one and had to be ended.

But, it did not follow that, because the position of the privileged class on their domains and in connection with the Government was open to abuse, they should be deprived of protection for person and property on their domains, and of influence and occupation under the Government .-- A favored aristocracy, when it is unoccupied and renders none of the services which its rank admits of, when it monopolizes all honors, offices, promotions, preferences, and pensions,[2212] to the detriment of others not less needy and deserving, is undoubtedly a serious evil.

But when an aristocracy is subject to the common law, when it is occupied, especially when its occupation is in conformity with its aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formation of an upper elective chamber or an hereditary peerage, it is a vast service .-- In any case it cannot be irreversibly suppressed; for, although it may be abolished by law, it is reconstituted by facts.

The legislator must necessarily choose between two systems, that which lets it lie fallow, or that which enables it to be productive, that which drives it away from, or that which rallies it round, the public service.
In every society which has lived for any length of time, a nucleus of families always exists whose fortunes and importance are of ancient date.

Even when, as in France in 1789, this class seems to be exclusive, each half century introduces into it new families; judges, governors, rich businessmen or bankers who have risen to the tope of the social ladder through the wealth they have acquired or through the important offices they have filled; and here, in the medium thus constituted, the statesman and wise counselor of the people, the independent and able politician is most naturally developed .-- Because, on the one hand, thanks to his fortune and his rank, a man of this class is above all vulgar ambitions and temptations.