Note 473 — Chapter IX · THE MUTUAL GUARANTEE. MÆGBURH. TITHING. HUNDRED.
Reading edition
The freeman is a member of an aristocracy in respect of all the unfree, whether these be temporarily so, as his children and guests, or permanently so, as his serfs. To be in the πολίτευμα, which others are not, to have the franchise which others have not, to have the freedom of a city which others have not, all these are forms of aristocracy,—the aristocracy of Greece, Rome and England. The Peers in England are not themselves exclusively an aristocracy: they are the born leaders of one, which consists now of ten-pound householders, freemen in towns, and county tenants under the Chandos clause.