*

come neceffary. There may be fome (very few, and very particularly circumftanced) where it would be clearly defireable. This I do not take to be the cafe of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of confiderable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who had feen the most of those conftitu tions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an abfolute democracy, no more than abfolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy, than the found conftitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly, Ariftotle obferves, that a democracy has many striking points of refemblance with a tyranny. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercifing the most cruel oppreffions upon the minority, whenever ftrong divifions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppreffion of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a fingle fceptre. In fuch a popular perfecution, individual fufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compaffion of mankind to affuage the fmart of their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous conftancy under their fufferings: but those who are fubjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external confolation. They

*When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had elapfed from my reading the paffage. A learned friend has found it, and it is as follows:

Mores iidem funt, ambo 'civibus melioribus dominantur; in uno, Plebifcita, decretis mandatifque in altero congruunt. Popularis, Parafitufque, in eodem homine non rarò videntur, et femper, perfimiles funt; Uterque, in imperio utriufque, Parafiti, apud tyrannos, Popularefque apud talem populum, maximè poffunt.

The ethical character is the fame; both exercife defpotifm over the · better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordinances and arrêts are in the other: the demagogue too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently the fame identical men, and always bear a clofe analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective forms of government, favourites with the abfolute monarch, and dema gogues with a people fuch as I have defcribed.' Arift. Politic. lib. iv. cap. 4.

R

They feem deferted by mankind; overpowered by a conIpiracy of their whole species.

But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to party tyranny, which I fuppofe it to have, and admitting it to poffefs as much good in it when unmixed, as I am fure it poffeffes when compounded with other forms; does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to recommend it? I do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works in general, left any permanent impreffion on my mind. He is a prefumptuous and fuperficial writer. But he has one obfervation, which, in my opinion, is not without depth and folidity. He fays, that he prefers a monarchy to other governments; because you can better ingraft any defcription of republic on a monarchy than any thing of monarchy upon the republican forms. I think him perfectly in the right. The fact is fo hiftorically; and it agrees well with the fpeculation.

I know how eafy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed greatnefs. By a revolution in the ftate, the fawning fycophant of yesterday, is converted into the auftere critic of the prefent hour. But steady independent minds, when they have an object of fo ferious a concern to mankind as government, under their contemplation, will difdain to affume the part of fatirifts and declaimers. They will judge of human inftitutions as they do of human characters. They will fort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal inftitutions as it is in mortal men.

Your government in France, though ufually, and I think justly, reputed the best of the unqualified or illqualified monarchies, was ftill full of abufes. These abufes accumulated in a length of time, as they must accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of a popular reprefentative. I am no ftranger to the faults and defects of the fubverted government of France ; and I think I am not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric upon any thing which is a juft and natural object of cenfure. But the question is not now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it then true, that the French government was fuch as to be incapable.

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incapable or undeferving of reform; so that it was of abfolute neceffity the whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic experimental edifice in its place? All France was of a different opinion in the beginning of the year 1789. The inftructions to the reprefentatives to the ftates-general, from every district in that kingdom, were filled with projects for the reformation of that government, without the remoteft fuggeftion of a defign to destroy it. Had fuch a design been then even infinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, and that voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have been sometimes led by degrees, fometimes hurried into things, the whole of which, if they could have feen together, they never would have permitted the most remote approach. When those inftructions were given, there was no queftion but that abufes exifted, and that they demanded a reform; nor is there now. In the interval between the inftructions and the revolution, things changed their shape; and in confequence of that change, the true question at prefent is, Whether those who would have reformed, or those who have destroyed, are in the right?

To hear fome men fpeak of the late monarchy of France, you would imagine that they were talking of Perfia, bleeding under the ferocious fword of Tehmas Kouli Khân; or at least describing the barbarous anarchic defpotifm of Turkey, where the finest countries in the moft genial climates in the world are wafted by peace more than any countries have been worried by war; where arts are unknown, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away and perifhes under the eye of the obferver. Was this the cafe of France? I have no way of determining the question but by a reference to facts. Facts do not fupport this resemblance. Along with much evil, there is fome good in monarchy itself; and some corrective to its evil, from religion, from laws, from manners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received; which rendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a good constitution)

conftitution) a defpotism rather in appearance than in reality.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must confider the state of its population as not the least certain. No country in which population flourishes, and is in progreffive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government. About fixty years ago, the Intendants of the generalities of France made, with other matters, a report of the population of their several districts. I have not the books, which are very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure them (I am obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the lefs pofitively) but I think the population of France was by them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two millions of fouls. At the end of the last century it had been generally calculated at eighteen. On either of these estimations France was not ill-peopled. Mr. Necker, who is an authority for his own time at leaft equal to the Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently fure principles, the people of France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions fix hundred and feventy thoufand. But was this the probable ultimate term under the old establishment? Dr. Price is of opinion, that the growth of population in France was by no means at its acmé in that year. I certainly defer to Dr. Price's authority a good deal more in these fpeculations, than I do in his general politics. This gentleman, taking ground on Mr. Necker's data, is very confident, that fince the period of that minifter's calculation, the French population has increafed rapidly; fo rapidly that in the year 1789 he will not confent to rate the people of that kingdom at a lower number than thirty millions. After abating much (and much I think ought to be abated) from the fanguine calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of France did encrease confiderably during this later period: but fuppofing that it encreased to nothing more than will be fufficient to complete the 24,670,000 to 25 millions, ftill a population of 25 millions, and that in an increafing progrefs, on a space of about twenty-feven thoufand fquare leagues, is immenfe. It is, for instance,

a good

a good deal more than the proportionable population of this ifland, or even than that of England, the best-peo pled part of the united kingdom.

It is not univerfally true, that France is a fertile country. Confiderable tracts of it are barren, and labour under other natural difadvantages. In the portions of that territory, where things are more favourable, as far as I am able to discover, the numbers of the people correfpond to the indulgence of nature.* The Generality of Lifle (this I admit is the strongest example) upon an extent of 404 leagues, about ten years ago, contained 734,600 fouls, which is 1772 inhabitants to each fquare league, The middle term for the reft of France is about 900 inhabitants to the fame admeasurement.

I do not attribute this population to the depofed government; becaufe I do not like to compliment the contrivances of men, with what is due in a great degree to the bounty of Providence. But that decried government could not have obftructed, most probably it favoured, the operation of thofe caufes (whatever they were) whether of nature in the foil, or in habits of induftry among the people, which has produced fo large a number of the fpecies throughout that whole kingdom, and exhibited in fome particular places fuch prodigies of population. I never will fuppofe that fabrick of a state to be the worst of all political inftitutions, which, by experience, is found to contain a principle favourable (however latent it may be) to the encrease of mankind.

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive. France far exceeds England in the multitude of her people; but I apprehend that her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours; that it is not fo equal in the distribution, nor fo ready in the circulation. I believe the difference in the form of the two governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage on the fide of England. I fpeak of England, not of the whole British dominions; which, if compared with those of France, will, in fome degree, weaken

* De l'Adminiftration des Finances de la France, par Mons, Necker, vol. i. p. 288.