those who set the highest value on freedom, who submit to every hardship, and encounter every danger, to secure it to themselves, never have shewn a disposition of extending its blessings, or even alleviating the bondage of that part of the human species, which a sordid and unjustifiable barter has brought into their power. The Court of Naples has not yet ventured, by one open act of authority, to abolish the immoderate power of the lords over their tenants. But it is believed that the Minister secretly wishes for its destruction; and in cases of flagrant oppression, when complaints are brought before the legal courts, or directly to the King himself, by the peasants against their lord, it is generally remarked that the Minister favours the complainant. Notwithstanding this, the masters have so many opportunities of oppressing, and such various methods of teasing, their vassals, that they generally chuse to bear their wrongs in silence; and perceiving that those who hold their lands immediately from the Crown, are in a much easier situation than themselves; without raising their hopes to perfect freedom, the height of their wishes is to be sheltered, from the vexations of little tyrants, under the unlimited power of one common master. The objects of royal attention, they fondly imagine, are too sublime, and the minds of kings too generous, to stoop to, or even to countenance, in their servants, the minute and unreasonable exertions, which are wrung at present from the hard hands of the exhausted labourer. Though the Neapolitan nobility still retain the ancient feudal authority over the peasants, yet their personal importance depends, in a great measure, on the favour of the King; who, under pretext of any offence, can confine them to their own estates, or imprison them at pleasure; and who, without any alleged offence, and without going to such extremes, can inflict a punishment, highly sensible to them, by not inviting them to the amusements of the Court, or not receiving them with smiles when they attend on any ordinary occasion. Unless this Prince were so very impolitic as to disgust all the nobility at once, and so unite the whole body against him, he has little to fear from their resentment. Even in case of such an union, as the nobles have lost the affection and attachment of their peasants, what could they do in opposition to a standing army of thirty thousand men, entirely devoted to the Crown? The establishment of standing armies has universally given stability to the power of the prince, and ruined that of the great lords. No nobility in Europe can now be said to inherit political importance, or to act independent of, or in opposition to, the influence of the crown; except the _temporal peers of that part of Great Britain called England_.