We propose making one or two very commonplace observations, professing to take no other guide than a small modicum of common sense, and to have no other object than our readers' delectation and the good of our country. (1.) How was it that nobles came to be nobles and commons came to be commons? how was it that the great territorial properties of this kingdom were originally set agoing and maintained? and how was it that you and I, and millions of others, came to be put in the apparently interminable predicament of having to toil and struggle with the world, or to be sentenced to something like labour, more or less hard, for life; you and I, we say, you and I, and our fathers and our children? Tell us that, gentle reader, whether you be good old Tory, or moderate Conservative, or slippery Peelite, or coldblooded Whig, or profligate Radical, or demoniac Chartist? FORCE, my good friend--FORCE, PHYSICAL FORCE--a good strong hand, and stout arm, and a heavy sword, and brave heart, and a firm determination--and no shilly-shally hesitation as to legality or illegality, no maudlin sympathy nor compunction--these were the things that did it; these carried the day; these were the moving powers of old; they raised the lever, and they settled down society into that bed in which it has been arranging itself ever since. And right good things they were, too, in their proper time and place; and so they ever will be: they are some of the mainsprings of the world; they may become concealed in their action, they may be forgotten, they may even fall into temporary inaction, but they come out again into full play ever and anon, and, when the wild storm of human passion drives over the world in a reckless tornado, they go along with the whirlwind, and they hover all around it, and they follow it, and they reassert their permanent sway over mankind. The Norman William's barons, the noble peers of Charlemagne, the princes and marshals of Napoleon, all found their estates at the points of their swords; and, while they kept their swords bright, their estates remained intact; but, when military prowess declined, legal astuteness and commercial craft crept in, and the broad lands decreased, because the sharp point and edge were blunted. The remote origin, the first title of every crowned head and noble family of Europe, is to be traced to the sword, or has been derived from it. We speak not of _parvenus_, we allude to the great families of the various realms of the ancient world; all _old_ and _real_ nobility is of the sword, and of the sword only. The French used to express this well, and understood the true footing on which nobility ought to stand; they always talked of la noblesse de l'epée, as contradistinguished from _la noblesse de la robe_: the former referred to the feudal families and their descendants, the latter to those who had become ennobled for services at the bar. As for nobility granted