light, we are conducted with fafety through the whole feries. We fee, that the parts of the fyftem do not clafh. The evils latent in the moft promifing contrivances are provided for as they arife. One advantage is as little as poffible facrificed to another. We compenfate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a confiftent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arifes, not an excellence in fimplicity, but one far fuperior, an excellence in compofition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long fucceffion of generations, that fucceffion ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are fo deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that the beft legiflators have been often fatisfied with the establishment of fome fure, folid, and ruling principle in government; a power like that which fome of the philofophers have called a plastic nature; and having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards to its own operation. To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a prefiding principle, and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of profound wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius, are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By their violent hafte, and their defiance of the procefs of nature, they are delivered over blindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchymift and empiric. They de fpair of turning to account any thing that is common. Diet is nothing in their fyftem of remedy. The worst of it is, that this their defpair of curing common diftempers by regular methods, arifes not only from defect of comprehenfion, but, I fear, from fome malignity of difpofition. Your legiflators feem to have taken their opinions of all profeffions, ranks, and offices, from the declamations and buffooneries of fatyrifts; who would themselves be aftonifhed if they were held to the letter of their own defcriptions. By liftening only to thefe, your leaders regard all things only on the fide of their vices and faults, and view thofe vices and faults under every colour of exaggeration. It is undoubtedly true, though it may feem paradoxical; but in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and dif playing faults, are unqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. It is therefore not wonderful, that they should be indifpofed and unable to ferve them. From hence arifes the complexional difpofition of fome of your guides to pull every thing in pieces. At this malicious game they difplay the whole of their quadrimanous activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought forth purely as a fport of fancy to try their talents, to rouze attention, and excite furprize, are taken up by these gentlemen, not in the fpirit of the original authors, authors, as means of cultivating their tafte and improving their ftyle. Thefe paradoxes become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in regulating the most important concerns of the ftate. Cicero ludicrously defcribes Cato as endeavouring to act in the commonwealth upon the school paradoxes which exercised the wits of the junior ftudents in the ftoic philofophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of fome perfons who lived about his time-pede nudo Catonem. Mr. Hume told me, that he had from Rouffeau himself the fecret of his principles of compofition. That acute, though eccentric, observer had perceived, that to strike and intereft the public, the marvellous must be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long fince loft its effect; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which fucceeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to a writer but that fpecies of the marvellous, which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way; that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary fituations, giving rife to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I believe, that were Rouffeau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical phrenzy of his fcholars, who in their paradoxes are fervile imitators; and even in their incredulity discover an implicit faith. Men who undertake confiderable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to pre fume fume ability. But the physician of the state, who, not fatisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to regenerate conftitutions, ought to fhew uncommon powers. Some very unusual appear ances of wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of the defigns of thofe who appeal to no practice, and who copy after no model. Has any fuch been manifefted? I fhall take a view (it fhall for the fubject be a very short one) of what the affembly has done with regard, firft, to the conftitution of the legislature; in the next place, to that of the executive power; then to that of the judicature; afterwards to the model of the army; and conclude with the fyftem of finance, to fee whether we can discover in any part of their schemes the portentous ability, which may juftify these bold undertakers in the fuperiority which they affume over mankind. It is in the model of the fovereign and prefiding part of this new republic, that we fhould expect their grand difplay. Here they were to prove their title to their proud demands. For the plan itfelf at large, and for the reafons on which it is grounded, 1 refer to the journals of the affembly of the 29th of September 1789, and to the subsequent proceedings which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in a matter fomewhat confufed I can fee light, the fyftem remains fubftantially as it has been originally framed. My few remarks will be fuch as regard its fpirit, its tendency, and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth, which they profefs theirs to be, fuited to the ends for which any commonwealth, and particularly cularly fuch a commonwealth, is made. At the fame time, I mean to confider its confiftency with itself, and its own principles. Old establishments are tried by their effects. If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we prefume the reft. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived. In old establifhments various correctives have been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed they are the refults of various neceffities and expediencies. They are not often conftructed after any theory; theories are rather drawn from them. In them we often fee the end beft obtained, where the means feem not perfectly reconcileable to what we may fancy was the original scheme. The means taught by experience may be better fuited to political ends than thofe contrived in the original project. They again re-act upon the primitive conftitution, and fometimes improve the defign itself from which they feem to have departed. I think all this might be curiously exemplified in the British conftitution. At worst, the errors and deviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and the fhip proceeds in her courfe. This is the cafe of old establishments; but in a new and merely theoretic fyftem, it is expected that every contrivance fhall appear, on the face of it, to anfwer its end; efpecially where the projectors are no way embarraffed with an endeavour to accommodate the new building to an old one, either in the walls or on the foundations. The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbifh whatever they found, and, like their ornamen tal |