Whether the society is divided into Two Classes, or whether there is a Gradation, is another important consideration. Where there are only two, proprietors and labourers, the Idea of Liberty is deficient or absent. The proprietory class can have no other desires on the subject than to repress the encroachments of the sovereign above them, or of the servile class below them: and in the servile class the conception of liberty is yet unformed. Only in barbarous countries, in countries where slavery subsists, and in some few strongholds of feudalism, is this decided division of society into two classes now to be found. Everywhere else there is more or less gradation; and in the most advanced countries the classes are least distinguishable. Below those members who, in European societies, are distinguished by birth, there is class beneath class of capitalists, though it is usual to comprehend them all, for convenience of speech, under the name of the middle class. Thus society in Great Britain, France, and Germany is commonly spoken of as consisting of three classes; while the divisions of the middle class are, in fact, very numerous. The small shopkeeper is not of the same class with the landowner, or wealthy banker, or professional man; while their views of life, their political principles, and their social aspirations, are as different as those of the peer and the mechanic. There are two pledges of the advancement of the idea of liberty in a community:--the one is the mingling of the functions of proprietor and labourer throughout the whole of a society ruled by a representative government; the other is the graduation of ranks by some other principle than hereditary succession.