Not only did the aristocracy think it a degradation to act the
part of landlord with respect to their own houses, but also, except in
select cases, to act that of tenant. Thus, the first Lord Brooke, (the
famous Fulke Greville,) writing to inform his next neighbor, a woman of
rank, that the house she occupied had been purchased by a London citizen,
confesses his fears that he shall in consequence lose so valuable a
neighbor; for, doubtless, he adds, your ladyship will not remain as tenant
to "such a fellow." And yet the man had notoriously held the office of
Lord Mayor, which made him, for the time, _Right Honorable_. The Italians
of this day make no scruple to let off the whole, or even part, of their
fine mansions to strangers.]
Yet what could be done? To have interfered with his conduct by an express
law, would be to infringe the sacred rights of property, and to say, in
effect, that a man should not do what he would with his own. This would
have been a remedy far worse than the evil to which it was applied; nor
could it have been possible so to shape the principle of a law, as not to
make it far more comprehensive than was desired.
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