England’s peers seemed to Phillips to have been “knit with the very vitals of the constitution,” completely enmeshed in the nation’s history. Their influence, he claimed, had “extended down through all respectable classes,” and their power seemed doubly secure, Phillips maintained, because England’s nobles had owed their positions to no degenerate hierarchy derived from unmerited birthright. Theirs was instead an aristocracy based on talent (just as Boston’s also claimed to be),
