have one by those whofe character and deftination point to virtues, than by thofe who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their eftates but their own will and appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the evils fuppofed inherent in mortmain. They pafs from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No excefs is good; and therefore too great a proportion of landed property may be held officially for life; but it does not feem to me of material injury to any commonwealth, that there should exist fome estates that have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquifition of money.

This letter is grown to a great length, though it is indeed short with regard to the infinite extent of the fubject. Various avocations have from time to time called my mind from the fubject. I was not forry to give myself leifure to obferve whether, in the proceedings of the national affembly, I might not find reafons to change or to qualify fome of my firft fentiments. Every thing has confirmed me more ftrongly in my firft opinions. It was my original purpose to take a view of the principles of the national affembly with regard to the great and fundamental establishments; and to compare the whole of what you have fubftituted in the place of what you have destroyed, with the feveral members of our Britifh conftitution. But this plan is of greater extent than at first I computed, and I find that you have little defire to take the advantage of any examples. At prefent I must content myself with fome remarks upon your establishments; referving for another time what I propofed to fay concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, ariftocracy, and democracy, as practically they exift.

I have taken a review of what has been done by the governing power in France. I have certainly spoke of it with freedom. Those whofe principle it is to defpife the ancient permanent fenfe of mankind, and to fet up a fcheme of fociety on new principles, muft naturally expect that fuch of us who think better of the judgment of the human race than of theirs, fhould confider both them and their devices, as men and fchemes upon their trial. They must take it for granted that we attend much to

their reason, but not at all to their authority. They have not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind in their favour. They avow their hoftility to opinion. Of course they must expect no fupport from that influence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the seat of its jurifdiction.

I can never confider this affembly as any thing elfe than a voluntary affociation of men, who have availed themselves of circumftances, to feize upon the power of the state. They have not the fanction and authority of the character under which they first met. They have affumed another of a very different nature; and have completely altered and inverted all the relations in which they originally ftood. They do not hold the authority they exercife under any conftitutional law of the ftate. They have departed from the inftructions of the people by whom they were fent; which instructions as the affembly did not act in virtue of any ancient ufage or fettled law, were the fole fource of their authority. The most confiderable of their acts have not been done by great majorities; and in this fort of near divifions, which carry only the conftructive authority of the whole, ftrangers will confider reasons as well as refolutions.

If they had fet up this new experimental government as a neceffary fubftitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time of prefcription, which, through long ufage, mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All those who have affections which lead them to the confervation of civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced from thofe principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which they juftify their continuance. But they will be late and reluctant in giving any fort of countenance to the operations of a power, which has derived its birth from no law and no neceffity; but which, on the contrary, has had its origin in those vices and finifter practices by which the focial union is often difturbed and fometimes deftroyed. This affembly has hardly a year's prefcription. We have their own word

for

for it, that they have made a revolution. To make a revolution is a measure which, prima fronte, requires an apology. To make a revolution is to fubvert the ancient ftate of our country; and no common reasons are called for to justify fo violent a proceeding. The sense of mankind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticise on the use that is made of it with lefs awe and reverence than that which is usually conceded to a fettled and recognized authority.

In obtaining and fecuring their power, the affembly proceeds upon principles the most oppofite from thofe which appear to direct them in the use of it. An obfervation on this difference will let us into the true spririt of their conduct. Every thing which they have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is by the most common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that is new. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and ufurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good, the fpirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the whole to the mercy of untried fpeculations; they abandon the dearest interests of the public to thofe loofe theories, to which none of them would chufe to trust the flightest of his private concerns. They make this difference, because in their defire of obtaining and fecuring power, they are thoroughly in earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The public interests, because about them they have no real folicitude, they abandon wholly to chance; I fay to chance, because their schemes have nothing in expe rience to prove their tendency beneficial.

We must always fee with a pity not unmixed with respect, the errors of those who are timid and doubtful of themselves with regard to points wherein the happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these gentlemen there is nothing of the tender parental folicitude which fears to cut up the infant for the fake of an experiment. In the vastness of their promises, and the confidence of their predictions,

predictions, they far outdo all the boafting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretenfions, in a manner provokes, and challenges us to an enquiry into their foundation.

I am convinced that there are men of confiderable parts among the popular leaders in the national affembly. Some of them difplay eloquence in their fpeeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exift without a proportionable degree of wifdom. When I fpeak of ability, I am obliged to diftinguish. What they have done towards the fupport of their fyftem befpeaks no ordinary men. In the fyftem itfelf, taken as the fcheme of a republic conftructed for procuring the profperity and fecurity of the citizen, and for promoting the ftrength and grandeur of the ftate, I confefs myfelf unable to find out any thing which difplays, in a fingle inftance, the work of a comprehenfive and difpofing mind, or even the provifions of a vulgar prudence. Their purpose every where feems to have been to evade and flip afide from difficulty. This it has been the glory of the great mafters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome; and when they had overcome the firft difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquefts over new difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their fcience; and even to push forward beyond the reach of their original thoughts, the land marks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a fevere inftructor fet over us by the fupreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legiflator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipfe colendi haud facilem effe viam voluit. He that wrestles with us ftrengthens our nerves, and fharpens our fkill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to confider it in all its relations. It will not fuffer us to be fuperficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for fuch a tafk;" it is the degenerate fondnefs for tricking fhort-cuts, and little fallacious facilities, that has in fo many parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary monarchy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With

them

them defects in wifdom are to be supplied by the plenitude of force. They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a principle of floth, they have the commen fortune of flothful men. The difficulties which they rather had eluded than escaped, meet them again in their courfe; they multiply and thicken on them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confufed detail, in an industry without limit, and without direction; and, in conclufion, the whole of their work becomes feeble, vitious, and infecure.

It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has obliged the arbitrary affembly of France to commence. their schemes of reform with abolition and total deftruction. But is it in deftroying and pulling down that fkill is displayed? Your mob can do this as well at least as your affemblies. The fhallowest understanding, the rudeft hand, is more than equal to that tafk. Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than pru dence, deliberation, and forefight can build up in an hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments are vifible and palpable. It calls for little ability: to point them out; and where abfolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. The fame lazy but restless difpofition, which loves floth and hates quiet, directs these politicians, when they come to work, for fupplying the place of what they have deftroyed. To make every

thing the reverse of what they have feen is quite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticifm is almoft baffled in difcovering the defects of what has not exifted; and eager enthufiafm,

and

A leading member of the affembly, M. Rabaud de St. Etiennè, hás expreffed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as poffible. Nothing can be more fimple :" Tous les établissemens en France couronnent le malheur du peuple: pour le rendre heureux il faut le renouveler changer fes idées ; changer fes loix; changer fes mœurs ;. 219 changer les hommes; changer les chofes; changer les mots tout détruire, oui, tout détruire; puifque tout eft à recréer." This gentleman was chofen prefident in an affembly not fitting at the Quinze vingt, or the Petites Maifons; and compofed of perfons giving themselves out to be rational beings; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct, differ in the smallest degree from the difcourfes, opinions, and actions of those within and without the affembly, who dire& the operations of the machine now at work in France.