An anomaly in the present constitution of noble society which requires remedying, is the frequent inadequacy of the territorial means possessed by noble families for the maintenance of their power and dignity. This has reached to such a pitch, of late days, that we have seen the ladies of two peers of the realm claiming public support _in formâ pauperum_; and we have witnessed the breaking-up and sale of such a princely establishment as that of Stowe. Many noble families are forced to depend on public offices, and other indirect sources, for the support of their members. Many noble families of high distinction and renown are poorer than ordinary commoners. There are very few estates of nobles (we say nothing of those of commoners) which are not oppressed by mortgages, and which, in reality, confer much less power than they nominally represent. From whatever causes these circumstances may have arisen,--whether from the folly and extravagance of the nobles themselves as a main cause, or from the imprudence of the crown in making unworthy creations, as a subsidiary cause--they have produced the most injurious effects upon the order, and have even justified the boast of the first commoner who thought himself superior to the last of the nobles. By few things has the order been more injured in public opinion than by the inequality and inadequacy of its territorial resources. This, too, becomes the more painfully evident in a nation where commerce has been allowed to assume an undue preponderance in the public mind, and where the means of gaining money are so various and so many, that the rapid acquisition of handsome fortunes is a very common occurrence. It is an evil, a negation of the ends of life, and a main cause of the decline and fall of a nation, that such a state of things should exist; but, seeing that it does exist, it is doubly the duty and the interest of all who have the honour and the permanency of national prosperity at heart, to favour the establishment and the maintenance of the strongest possible antagonistic principle--the forming and preserving of large territorial possessions in favour of the order of nobles. Believing that the law of primogeniture is the basis of all political freedom, we would urge the expediency of modifying the law, so that certain great estates, like the fiefs of old, should become inalienable by any person, unattachable for any liabilities, and indivisible under any circumstances, in favour of the order of nobles: and that the holders of such estates should be nobles, and nobles only. In the same spirit we would say, that the extent of territory should determine the rank of the noble, taking, as the starting-point, the estates as they might exist at any period of time; that to each title a certain territory should be inalienably attached, and that the title itself should derive its name from that territory--the holder of the territory, whoever he might be, always taking the title.