Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/249

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pendence and freedom; but a people must be of a piece with their institutions.—Where the laws equalise all the inhabitants of a state, the laws, and not the makers of them, are the habitual objects of popular respect; but where privileged orders exist, as in free monarchies they must, the makers of the laws are from habit the objects of reverence, and the laws are reverenced with them. In a Republic, therefore, the external distinctions we have been discussing would be useless, because there are no distinct orders to be maintained; but in a Monarchy they are important, because the whole frame of such a state being supported by personal privileges and gradations, if that system were disturbed the authority of the laws would be disturbed also.


"This is, perhaps, exemplified in the magistracy of our City of London, where the elections are popular in the extreme; but being in the very focus of a monarchy, and the monarchical feeling predominating in the pomp and ceremonies which peculiarly distinguish its government, the magistrates,