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region will shortly have no country. No man ever was attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He never will glory in belonging to the Checquer; N° 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to, our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country as have been formed by habit, and not by a fudden jerk of autho rity, were so, many little images of the great country in which the heart found fomething which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished by this fubordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a fort of elemental training to those higher and more large regards, by which alone men come to be affected, as with their own concern, in the profperity of a kingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general territory itself, as in the old name: of provinces, the citizens are interested from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on ac count of the geometric properties of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris does cer tainly press down and hold these republics together, as long as it lafts. But, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last very long.

Passing from the civil creating, and the civil cementing principles of this constitution, to the national affembly, which is to appear and act as fovereign, we fee a body in its conftitution with every poffible power, and no possible external controul. We fee a body without fundamental laws, without

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without established maxims, without respected rules of proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever. Their idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of legislative competency, and their examples for common cafes, from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most respects like the present affembly; but, by the mode of the new elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of internal controul existing in a minority chofen originally from various interests, and preferving fomething of their spirit. If poffible, the next affembly must be worse than the present. The prefent, by destroying and altering every thing, will leave to their successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most abfurd. To suppose such an assembly fitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.

Your all-fufficient legislators, in their hurry to do every thing at once, have forgot one thing that feems effential, and which, I believe, never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by any projector of a republic. They have forgot to conftitute a Senate, or fomething of that nature and character. Never, before this time, was heard of a body politic compofed of one legislative and active assembly, and its executive officers, without fuch a council; without something to which foreign states might connect themselves; something to which, in the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up; fomething which might give a bias and steadiness, and preferve something like confistency

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confiftency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it, but it seems to be in the very effence of a republican government. It holds a fort of middle place between the fupreme power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive. Of this there are no traces in your constitution; and in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in any thing else, discovered a fovereign incapacity.

Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done towards the formation of an executive power. For this they have chofen a degraded king. This their first executive officer is to be a machine, without any fort of deliberative difcretion in any one act of his function. At best he is but a channel to convey to the national assembly fuch matter as may import that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without its importance; though infinitely perilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may pass to the affembly, with equal authenticity, through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction to measures by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.

To confider the French scheme of an executive officer in its two natural divifions of civil and political-In the first it must be observed, that, according to the new conftitution, the higher parts

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of judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The king of France is not the fountain of justice. The judges, neither the original nor the appellate, are of his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates, nor has a negative on the choice. He is not even the public profecutor. He serves only as a notary to authenticate the choice made of the judges in the several districts. By his officers he is to execute their fentence. When we look into the true nature of his authority, he appears to be nothing more than a chief of bumbailiffs, ferjeants at mace, catchpoles, jailers, and hangmen. It is impoffible to place any thing called royalty in a more degrading point of view. A thousand times better it had been for the dignity of this unhappy prince, that he had nothing at all to do with the admini.. stration of justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable, and all that is confolatory in that function, without power of originating any process; without a power of fufpenfion, mitigation, or pardon. Every thing in justice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was not for nothing that the affembly has been at fuch pains to remove the stigma from certain offices, when they were refolved to place the perfon who lately had been their king in a situation but one degree above the executioner, and in an office nearly of the same quality. It is not in nature, that fituated as the king of the French now is, he can refpect himself, or can be respected by others.

View this new executive officer on the fide of

his political capacity, as he acts under the orders

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of the national assembly. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magiftracy, though merely such, is a great trust. It is a trust indeed that has much depending upon its faithful and diligent performance, both in the perfon prefiding in it and in all his fubordinates. Means of performing this duty ought to be given by regulation; and difpofitions towards it ought to be infused by the circumstances attendant on the trust. It ought to be environed with dignity, authority, and confideration, and it ought to lead to glory. The office of execution is an office of exertion, It is not from impotence we are to expect the tasks of power. What fort of perfon is a king to command executory fervice, who has no means whatsoever to reward it? Not in a permanent office; not in a grant of land; no, not in a penfion of fifty pounds a year; not in the vainest and moft trivial title. In France the king is no more the fountain of honour than he is the fountain of justice. All rewards, all distinctions are in other hands. Those who serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive but fear; by a fear of every thing except their master. His functions of internal coercion are as odious, as those which he exercifes in the department of justice. If relief is to be given to any municipality, the assembly gives it. If troops are to be sent to reduce them to obedience to the affembly, the king is to execute the order; and upon every occafion he is to be fpattered over with the blood of his people. He has no negative; yet his name and authority is used to enforce every harfh

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