We see this already. What a shock was propagated through the island, when, the other day, a large proprietor, turning a considerable cluster of his tenants out of the houses and lands they occupied, because they refused to vote for a representative in parliament implicitly as he bade them, urged in his own justification, "Shall I not do what I will with my own?" This was all sound morals and divinity perhaps at the period of his birth. Nobody disputed it; or, if any one did, he was set down by the oracles of the vicinage as a crackbrained visionary. This man, so confident in his own prerogatives, had slept for the last twenty years, and awoke totally unconscious of what had been going on in almost every corner of Europe in the interval. A few more such examples; and so broad and sweeping an assumption will no more be heard of, and it will remain in the records of history, as a thing for the reality of which we have sufficient evidence, but which common sense repudiates, and which seems to demand from us a certain degree of credulity to induce us to admit that it had ever been. The manners of society are by no means so unchanged and unalterable as many men suppose. It is here, as in the case of excessive drinking, which I had lately occasion to mention(36). In rude and barbarous times men of the highest circles piqued themselves upon their power of swallowing excessive potations, and found pleasure in it. It is in this as in so many other vices, we follow implicitly where our elders lead the way. But the rage of drinking is now gone by; and you will with difficulty find a company of persons of respectable appearance, who assemble round a table for the purpose of making beasts of themselves. Formerly it was their glory; now, if any man unhappily retains the weakness, he hides it from his equals, as he would a loathsome disease. The same thing will happen as to parliamentary corruption, and the absolute authority that was exercised by landlords over the consciences of their tenants. He that shall attempt to put into act what is then universally condemned, will be a marked man, and will be generally shunned by his fellows. The eye of the world will be upon him, as the murderer fancies himself followed by the eye of omnipotence; and he will obey the general voice of the community, that he may be at peace with himself. (36) See above, Essay 9.