Political aptitude of the aristocracy.--Its disposition in 1789.--Special services which it might have rendered.--The principle of the Assembly as to original equality. --Rejection of an Upper Chamber.--The feudal rights of the aristocracy.--How far and why they were worthy of respect. --How they should have been transformed.--Principle of the Assembly as to original liberty.--Distinction established by it in feudal dues; application of its principle.--The lacunae of its law.--Difficulties of redemption.--Actual abolition of all feudal liens.--Abolition of titles and territorial names.--Growing prejudice against the aristocracy.--Its persecutions.--The emigration. Was it necessary to begin by making a clean sweep, and was it advisable to abolish or only to reform the various orders and corporations?--Two prominent orders, the clergy and the nobles, enlarged by the ennobled plebeians who had grown wealthy and acquired titled estates, formed a privileged aristocracy side by side with the Government, whose favors it might receive on the condition of seeking them assiduously and with due acknowledgment, privileged on its own domains, and taking advantage there of all rights belonging to the feudal chieftain without performing his duties. This abuse was evidently an enormous one and had to be ended. But, it did not follow that, because the position of the privileged class on their domains and in connection with the Government was open to abuse, they should be deprived of protection for person and property on their domains, and of influence and occupation under the Government.--A favored aristocracy, when it is unoccupied and renders none of the services which its rank admits of, when it monopolizes all honors, offices, promotions, preferences, and pensions,[2212] to the detriment of others not less needy and deserving, is undoubtedly a serious evil. But when an aristocracy is subject to the common law, when it is occupied, especially when its occupation is in conformity with its aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formation of an upper elective chamber or an hereditary peerage, it is a vast service.--In any case it cannot be irreversibly suppressed; for, although it may be abolished by law, it is reconstituted by facts. The legislator must necessarily choose between two systems, that which lets it lie fallow, or that which enables it to be productive, that which drives it away from, or that which rallies it round, the public service. In every society which has lived for any length of time, a nucleus of families always exists whose fortunes and importance are of ancient date. Even when, as in France in 1789, this class seems to be exclusive, each half century introduces into it new families; judges, governors, rich businessmen or bankers who have risen to the tope of the social ladder through the wealth they have acquired or through the important