"
Now a hereditary nobility is a rank which takes precedence of merit
and is hoped for without any good reason- a thing of the imagination
without genuine reality. For if an ancestor had merit, he could not
transmit it to his posterity, but they must always acquire it for
themselves. Nature has in fact not so arranged that the talent and
will which give rise to merit in the state, are hereditary. And
because it cannot be supposed of any individual that he will throw
away his freedom, it is impossible that the common will of all the
people should agree to such a groundless prerogative, and hence the
sovereign cannot make it valid. It may happen, however, that such an
anomaly as that of subjects who would be more than citizens, in the
manner of born officials, or hereditary professors, has slipped into
the mechanism of government in olden times, as in the case of the
feudal system, which was almost entirely organized with reference to
war. Under such circumstances, the state cannot deal otherwise with
this error of a wrongly instituted rank in its midst, than by the
remedy of a gradual extinction through hereditary positions being left
unfilled as they fall vacant. The state has therefore the right
provisorily to let a dignity in title continue, until the public
opinion matures on the subject.
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