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192 deserve to be trusted with it, according to their respective desires and proved capacities; and after having so secured it to each, to exercise only such vigilance over his treatment of it as the State must give also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the most part leaving him free, but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or abuse of power. And in the case of great old families, which always ought to be, and in some measure, however decadent, still truly are, the noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of state and outward nobleness; but their income must in no wise be derived from the rents of it, nor must they be occupied (even in the most distant or subordinately administered methods), in the exaction of rents. That is not noblemen's work. Their income must be fixed, and paid them by the State, as the King's is.

152. So far from their land being to them a source of income, it should be, on the whole,