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 propofitions made by the leaders in any public affembly, 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 in life, of permanent property, of education, and of fuch habits as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.

In the calling of the states general of France, the first thing which struck me, was a great departure from the antient course, I found the representation for the Third Estate composed of fix hundred persons. 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 desertion 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 furprize, 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 diftinguished 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 in universities; but for the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were diftinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurifdictions, country attornies, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomentors and conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the moment I read the lift I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the profeffors hold themselves. Whatever the perfonal merits of many individual dual lawyers might have been, and in many it was undoubtedly very confiderable, in that military kingdom, no part of the profeffion had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices great family splendour, and were invested with great power and authority. These certainly were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.

Whenever the supreme authority is invested in a body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of fupreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake; who could not be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with difcretion, a power which they themselves, more than any others, must be furprized to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and, as it were, by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of fubordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who could conceive, that men who are habitually meddling, daring, fubtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expence

expence to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things. They must join (if their capacity did not permit them to lead) in any project which could procure to them a litigious constitution; which could lay open to them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of all great convulfions and revolutions in the state, and particularly in all great and violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that they would attend to the stability of property, whose existence had always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and infecure ? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation, but their disposition and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs, muft remain the fame.

1

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other descriptions, of more fober minds, and more enlarged understandings. Were they then to be awed by the fuper-eminent

2. authority and awful dignity of an handful of country clowns who have seats in that Affembly, fome of whom are faid not to be able to read and write? and by not a greater number of traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and more confpicuous in the order of society, had, never known any thing beyond their counting-houfe?

ing-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers, than to become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous difproportion, the whole must needs be governed by them. To the faculty of law was joined a pretty confiderable proportion of the faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors therefore must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the fides of fick beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expence, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more solid substance of land. To these were joined men of other descriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interests of a great state was to be expected, and as little regard to the stability of any inftitution; men formed to be instruments, not controls. Such in general was the composition of the Tiers Etat in the National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the flightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the country.

We know that the British house of commons, without shutting its doors to any merit in any class, is, by the fure operation of adequate causes, filled