[clx. 301]

1822 July 8

Constitut. Code Rationale

Note

Factitious honor

?. Evils

In the Prussian Monarchy, made up of shreds and patches, torn at different times from their various possessors - in the Prussian Monarchy till t'other day there was nothing above a Count. Of late the Monarchy being enlarged and consolidated the treasury of honor has been enriched there by /with/ an order of Princes

In Poland before the partition /delaceration[?]/ a fear of the most opulent families that is to say the greatest Landholders, though it is believed without any formal creation used to bear in other languages the title of Princes and continue to do so since

In Russia, in which the manufacture of factitious honour has within this country been carried on with the greatest degree of elaboration, there are Barons and above them Counts but nothing higher: the Princes having been such not by creation, but some how or other, it is not generally known how it remains for the genius of the present or some future Aristocrat to import from England all along with its other products the titles of Duke and Marquis, to set above those of Count and Baron.

In reality this question about rank is by no means so frivolous as it may appear to be: for by all these elevations it will be seen how the people are tormented and depressed.

In the several countries in which a title originally conferred by the Monarch has been assumed by men on whom it has not either on their own persons or on the persons of their ancestors been conferred, an instance may be seen of a sort of superfoetation of depravity, a fraud made to grow out of a fraud: the Monarch by /by the conspiracy by which/ this false certificate of meritorious service has been produced the Monarch and those /the individuals/ thus honored by him have swindled the public at large out of a certain quantity of respect not really due, imposing thus upon the public at large: and the usurpers of it have on their parts imposed upon the public at large and the Monarch both, by pretending to have received from him what in truth he never gave.