It is, indeed, one of the
advantages attending the narrow bottom of their aristocracy, (narrow as
compared with their acquired dominions, otherwise broad enough,) that an
exclusion from such employments cannot possibly be made amongst their
subjects. There are, besides, advantages in states so constituted, by
which those who are considered as of an inferior race are indemnified
for their exclusion from the government, and from nobler employments. In
all these countries, either by express law, or by usage more operative,
the noble castes are almost universally, in their turn, excluded from
commerce, manufacture, farming of land, and in general from all
lucrative civil professions. The nobles have the monopoly of honor; the
plebeians a monopoly of all the means of acquiring wealth. Thus some
sort of a balance is formed among conditions; a sort of compensation is
furnished to those who, in a _limited sense_, are excluded from the
government of the state.
Between the extreme of _a total exclusion_, to which your maxim goes,
and _an universal unmodified capacity_, to which the fanatics pretend,
there are many different degrees and stages, and a great variety of
temperaments, upon which prudence may give full scope to its exertions.
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