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 higheft of all, who often united to their profeffional offices great family fplendour, and were invefted with great power and authority. These certainly were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much efteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute. Whenever the fupreme authority is invested in a body fo compofed, it must evidently produce the confequences of fupreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at ftake; 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 thefe men, fuddenly, and, as it were, by enchantment, fnatched from the humbleft rank of fubordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatnefs? Who could conceive, that men who are habitually meddling, daring, fubtle, active, of litigious difpofitions and unquiet minds, would eafily fall back into their old condition of obfcure 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 interefts, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was neceffary; 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 conftitution; which could lay open to them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of all great convulfions and revolutions in the ftate, and particularly in all great and violent permutations of property Was it to be expected that they would attend to the stability of property, whofe exiftence had always depended upon whatever rendered property queftionable, ambiguous, and infecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation, but their difpofition and habits, and mode of accomplishing their defigns, muft remain the fame. Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other defcriptions, of more fober minds, and more enlarged understandings. Were they then to be awed by the fuper-eminent authority and awful dignity of an handful of country clowns who have feats 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 fomewhat more inftructed, and more confpicuous in the order of fociety, had never known any thing beyond their counting-house? 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 counterpoife. With fuch 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, poffeffed in France its juft eftimation. Its profeffors therefore must have the qualities of men not habituated to fentiments of dignity. But fuppofing 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 ftate finen and legiflators. Then came the dealers in ftocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expence, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more folid fubftance of land. To these were joined men of other defcriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interefts of a great ftate was to be expected, and as little regard to the ftability of any inftitution; men formed to be inftruments, not controls. Such in general was the compofition of the Tiers Etat in the National Affembly; in which was fcarcely to be perceived the flightest traces of what we call the natural landed intereft of the country. We know that the British houfe of commons, without fhutting its doors to any merit in any clafs, is, by the fure operation of adequate causes, filled filled with every thing illuftrious in rank, in defcent, in hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic diftinction, that the country can afford. But fuppofing, what hardly can be fupposed as a cafe, that the house of commons fhould be compofed in the fame manner with the Tiers Etat in France, would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror? God forbid I should infinuate any thing derogatory to that profeffion, which is another priesthood, adminiftering the rites of facred juftice. But whilft I revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do, as much as one man can do, to prevent their exclufion from any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lye to nature. They are good and useful in the compofition; they must be mifchievous if they preponderate fo as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for others. It cannot escape obfervation, that when men are too much confined to profeffional and faculty habits, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather difabled than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehenfive connected view of the various complicated external and internal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious thing called a state. After all, if the house of commons were to have an wholly profeffional and faculty compofition, what is the power of the house of commons, circumfcribed and fhut in by the immoveable barriers of laws, ufages, pofitive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoized by the house of lords, and every moment of its exiftence at the difcretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or diffolve us? The power of the house of commons, direct or indirect, is indeed great; and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the fpirit belonging to true greatness, at the full; and it will do fo, as long as it can keep the breakers of law in India from becoming the makers of law for England. The power, however, of the houfe of commons, when leaft diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean, compared to that refiding in a fettled majority of your National Affembly. That Affembly, fince the deftruction of the orders, has no fundamental law, no ftrict convention, no respected usage to reftrain it. Inftead of finding themfelves obliged to conform to a fixed conftitution, they have a power to make a conftitution which fhall conform to their defigns. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can ferve as a control on them. What ought to be the heads, the hearts, the difpofitions, that are qualified, or that dare, not only to make laws under a fixed conftitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new conftitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from the monarch on the throne to the veftry of a parith? |