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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: out, rapidly by their own crimes; and very few of our nobility can
trace their names back to the authentic Battle Abbey roll. The
great majority of the peers have sprung from, and all have
intermarried with, the Commons; and the peerage has been from the
first, and has become more and more as centuries have rolled on, the
prize of success in life.
The cause is plain. The conquest of England by the Normans was not
one of those conquests of a savage by a civilised race, or of a
cowardly race by a brave race, which results in the slavery of the
conquered, and leaves the gulf of caste between two races--master
and slave. That was the case in France, and resulted, after
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