means of its contribution growing out of an export commerce. The landholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the creators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out of which their revenues arife. Very nearly the fame arguments will apply to the representative share given on account of direct contribution: because the direct contribution must be affefsed on wealth real, or prefumed; and that local wealth will itself arise from causes not local, and which therefore in equity ought not to produce a local preference.

It is very remarkable, that in this fundamental regulation, which settles the representation of the mass upon the direct contribution, they have not yet settled how that direct contribution shall be laid, and how apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy towards the continuance of the present assembly in this strange procedure. However, until they do this, they can have no certain constitution. It must depend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary with every variation in that system. As they have contrived matters, their taxation does not so much depend on their constitution, as their constitution on their taxation. This must introduce great confufion among the maffes; as the variable qualification for votes within the district must, if ever real contested elections take place, cause infinite internal controversiesi

ン

To compare together the three bases, not on their political reason, but on the ideas on which the affembly works, and to try its consistency with itself, we cannot avoid observing, that the principle which the committee call the basis of popula tion, does not begin to operate from the fame point with the two other principles called the bases of territory and of contribution, which are both of an aristocratick nature. The confequence is, that where all three begin to operate together, there is the most absurd inequality produced by the operation of the former on the two latter principles. Every canton contains four square leagues, and is estimated to contain, on the ave rage, 4,000 inhabitants, or 680 voters in the pri. mary affemblies, which vary in numbers with the population of the canton, and send one deputy to the commune for every 200 voters. Nine cantons make a communė.

A

:

1

Now let us take a canton containing a fea-port town of trade, or a great manufacturing town. Let us suppose the population of this canton to be 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters, forming three primary afsfemblies, and sending ten deputies to the

commune.

ال نام

Oppose to this one canton two others of the remaining eight in the fame commune. These we may suppose to have their fair population of 4,000 inhabitants, and 680 voters each, or 8,000 inhabitants and 1,360 voters, both together. Thefe will form

1

form only two primary assemblies, and send only fix

deputies to the commune.

When the affembly of the commune comes to vote on the basis of territory, which principle is first admitted to operate in that assembly, the single canton which has half the territory of the other two, will have ten voices to fix in the election of three deputies to the assembly of the department, chofen on the express ground of a representation of territory. This inequality, striking as it is, will be yet highly aggravated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the feveral other cantons of the commune to fall proportionably short of the average population, as much as the principal canton exceeds it.

Now as to the basis of contribution, which also is a principle admitted first to operate in the assembly of the commune. Let us again take one canton, such as is ftated above. If the whole of the direct contributions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town be divided equally among the inhabitants, each individual will be found to pay much more than an individual living in the country according to the fame average. The whole paid by the inhabitants of the former will be more than the whole paid by the inhabitants of the latter -we may fairly affume one-third more. Then the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the canton will pay as much as 19,050 inhabitants, or 3,289

1

Y 3

1 1

3,289 voters of the other cantons, which are nearly the estimated proportion of inhabitants and voters of five other cantons. Now the 2,193 votes will,

as I before said, send only ten deputies to the afsembly; the 3,289 voters will fend fixteen. Thus, for an equal share in the contribution of the whole commune, there will be a difference of fixteen voices to ten in voting for deputies to be chosen on the principle of representing the general contribution of the whole commune.

By the fame mode of computation we shall find 15,875 inhabitants, or 2,741 voters of the other cantons, who pay one-sixth LESS to the contribution of the whole commune, will have three voices MORE than the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the one canton.

Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and mass, in this curious repartition of the rights of representation arising out of territory and contribution. The qualifications which these confer are in truth negative qualifications, that give a right in an inverse proportion to the poffef. fion of them.

In this whole contrivance of the three bafes, consider it in any light you please, I do not see a variety of objects, reconciled in one consistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly and irreconcileably brought and held toge. ther by your philosophers, like wild beasts shut up

in a cage, to claw and bite each other to their mutual destruction.

I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of confidering the formation of a conftitution. They have much, but bad, metaphyficks; much, but bad, geometry; much, but false, proportionate arithmetick; but if it were all as exact as metaphysicks, geometry, and arithmetick ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistent in all their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision. It is remarkable, that in a great arrangement of mankind, not one reference whatsoever is to be found to any thing moral or any thing politick; nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the passions, the interests of

You fee I only confider this constitution as electoral, and leading by steps to the national affembly. I do not enter into the internal government of the departments, and their genealogy through the communes and cantons. These local governments are, in the original plan, to be as nearly as possible compofed in the fame manner and on the same principles with the elective afsemblies. They are each of them bodies perfectly compact and rounded in themselves.

You cannot but perceive in this scheme, that it has a direct and immediate tendency to fever France into a variety of republicks, and to render them totally

Y 4