dom; every thing human and divine sacrificed to the idol of publick credit, and national bankruptcy the confequence; and to crown all, the paper fecurities of new, precarious, tottering power, the difcredited paper securities of impoverished fraud, and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lafting conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically fubverted. Were all these dreadful things neceffary? were they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult, to the quiet shore of a tranquil and profperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devaftation of civil war; they are the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the display of inconfiderate and presumptuous, because unrefifted and irresistible authority. The perfons who have thus squandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the perfons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of publick evils (the last stake referved for the ultimate ransom of the state) have met met in their progress with little, or rather with no oppofition at all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal procession than the progress of a war. Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished and laid every thing level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects of greater confequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and distress, thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the base refult of fear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, afsaffinations, flaughters, and burnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning. This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not confider the compofition of the national affembly: I do not mean its formal conftitution, which as it now stands is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which, in a great measure, it is composed, which is of ten thousand times greater con, sequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were to know nothing of this affembly but by its title and function, no colours could paint to the imagination any thing more venerable. In that light the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would pause and hefitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead of blameable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither the one nor the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the engagement of nature, they have not the promise of revelation for any such powers. After I had read over the list of the perfons and descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing which they afterwards did could appear aftonishing. Among them, indeed, I faw some of known rank; some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and mass of the body which constitutes its character, and must finally determine its direction. In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a confiderable degree, fol low. low. They must conform their propofitions to the taste, talent, and disposition of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly compofed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a fupreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of abfurd projects! If, what is the more likely event, instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by finister ambition, and a luft of meretricious glory, then the feeble part of the affembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes in its turn the dupe and instrument of their designs. In this political traffick the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become subservient to the worst designs of their leaders, To fecure any degree of fobriety in the propositions made by the leaders in any publick assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges; they must also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition condition in life, of permanent property, of education, and of fuch habits as enlarge and liberalise the understanding. In the calling of the states general of France, the first thing that struck me, was a great departure from the ancient course. I found the representation for the third estate composed of fix hundred perfons. They were equal in number to the representatives of both the other orders. If the orders were to act separately, the number would not, beyond the confideration of the expence, be of much moment. But when it became apparent that the three orders were to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary effect of this numerous representation became obvious. A very small defertion from either of the other two orders must throw the power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of the state was foon refolved into that body. Its due composition became therefore of infinitely the greater importance. Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion of the affembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was composed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and integrity; not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar; not of renowned profeffors, |