After all, if the house of commons were to have an wholly profeffional and faculty compofition, what is the power of the houfe of commons, circumfcribed and fhut in by the immoveable barriers of laws, ufages, pofitive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoized by the houfe 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 preferve its greatnefs, and the fpirit belonging to true greatnefs, 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 house 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 refpected ufage to restrain it. Inftead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed conftitution, they have a power to make a conftitution, which hall 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 át one heat to ftrike 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 parish? parish? But fools rush in where angels fear to tread." In fuch a ftate of unbounded power, for undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almoft phyfical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in the management of human affairs. Having confidered the compofition of the third eftate as it stood in its original frame, I took a view of the reprefentatives of the clergy. There too it appeared, that full as little regard was had to the general fecurity of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for their public purposes, in the principles of their election. That election was fo contrived as to fend a very large proportion of mere country curates to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state; men who never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knew nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obfcure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether fecular or ecclefiaftical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must be many, who, for the smallest hope of the meaneft dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attemps upon a body of wealth, in which they could hardly look to have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the other af fembly, thefe curates must neceffarily become the active coadjutors, or at beft the paffive inftruments of those by whom they had been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. They too could F 2 hardly hardly be the most confcientious of their kind, who, prefuming upon their incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a truft which led them from their natural relation to their flocks, and their natural fpheres of action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms. This preponderating weight being added to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers Etat, completed that momentum of ignorance, rafhnefs, prefumption, and luft of plunder, which nothing has been able to refist. To obferving men it must have appeared from the beginning, that the majority of the Third Eftate, in conjunction with fuch a deputation from the clergy as I have defcribed, whilft it pursued the deftruction of the nobility, would inevitably become fubfervient to the worst defigns of individuals in that clafs. In the spoil and humiliation of their own order thefe individuals would poffefs a fure fund for the pay of their new followers. To fquander away the objects which made the happinefs of their fellows, would be to them no facrifice at all. Turbulent, difcontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally defpife their own order. One of the first fymptoms they discover of a felfish and mifchievous ambition, is a profligate difregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the fubdivifion, to love the little platoon we belong to in fociety, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the feries by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. mankind. The interefts of that portion of focial arrangement is a truft in the hands of all thofe who compofe it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abufe, none but traitors would barter it away for their own perfonal advantage. There were, in the time of our civil troubles in England (I do not know whether you have any fuch in your Affembly in France) feveral perfons, like the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or their families had brought an odium on the throne, by the prodigal difpenfation of its bounties towards them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arifing from the difcontents of which they were themfelves the caufe; men who helped to fubvert that throne to which they owed, fome of them, their existence, others all that power which they employed to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are fet to the rapacious demands of that fort of people, or that others are permitted to partake in the objects they would engrofs, revenge and envy foon fill up the craving vaid that is left in their avarice. Confounded by the complication of diftempered paffions, their reafon is disturbed; their views become valt and perplexed; to others inexplicable; to themselves uncertain. They find, on all fides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things. But in the fog and haze of confufion all is enlarged, and appears without any limit. When men of rank facrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a diftinct object, and work with low inftruments and for low ends, the whole compofition becomes low and bafe, Does not fomething like this now appear in France? Does it not produce fomething ignoble and inglorious? a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy? a tendency in all that is done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the ftate? Other revolutions have been conducted by perfons, who whilft they attempted or effected changes in the commonwealth, fanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whofe peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the deftruction of their country. They were men of great civil and great military talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers contending with each other who could beft remedy with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the wretchednefs and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate councils. The compliment made to one of the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinfman, a favourite poet of that time, fhews what it was he propofed, and what indeed to a great degree he accomplished in the fuccefs of his ambition: Still as you rife, the ftate, exalted too, Finds no diftemper whilft 'tis chang'd by you; Chang'd like the world's great fcene, when without noise Thefe |