Page:A Vindication of Natural Society - Burke (1756).djvu/62

 effeminate Luxury, by which they corrupt their Subjects. They are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept in a perpetual Terror by the Horrors of a State Inquisition; here you see a People deprived of all rational Freedom, and tyrannized over by about two Thousand Men; and yet this Body of two Thousand, are so far from enjoying any Liberty by the Subjection of the rest, that they are in an infinitely severer State of Slavery; they make themselves the most degenerate, and unhappy of Mankind, for no other Purpose than that they may the more effectually contribute to the Misery of an whole Nation. In short, the regular and methodical Proceedings of an Aristocracy, are more intolerable than the very Excesses of a Despotism, and in general, much further from any Remedy.

Thus, my Lord, we have pursued Aristocracy through it's whole Progress; we have seen the Seeds, the Growth, and