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taking his country out of its prefent difgraceful and deplorable fituation of fervitude, anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. I cannot fpeculate quite fo fanguinely as he does: but he is a Frenchman, and has a clofer duty relative to thofe objects, and better means of judging of them, than I can have. I wish that the formal avowal which he refers to, made by one of the principal leaders in the affembly, concerning the tendency of their scheme to bring France not only from a monarchy to a republic, but froni a republic to a mere confederacy, may be very particularly attended to. It adds new force to my observations; and indeed M. de Calonne's work fupplies my deficiencies by many new and striking arguments on moft of the fubjects of this Letter*

It is this refolution, to break their country into feparate republics, which has driven them into the greatest number of their difficulties and contradictions. If it were not for this, all the questions exact equality, and thefe balances, never to be fettled, of individual rights, population, and contribution, would be wholly useless. The reprefentation, though derived from parts, would be a duty which equally regarded the whole. Each deputy to the affembly would be the reprefentative of France, and of all its defcriptions, of the many and of the few, of the rich and of the poor, of the great diftricts and of the fmall. All thefe diftricts would themselves be fubordinate to fome standing authority, exifting independently of them; an authority in which their representation, and every thing that

*See L'Etat de la France, p. 363.

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belongs to it, originated, and to which it was pointed. This ftanding, unalterable, fundamental government would make, and it is the only thing which could make, that territory truly and properly an whole. With us, when we elect popular reprefentatives, we fend them to a council, in which each man individually is a fubject, and fubmitted to a government complete in all its ordinary functions. With you the elective affembly is the fovereign, and the fole fovereign: all the members are therefore integral parts of this fole fovereignty. But with us it is totally different. With us the reprefentative, separated from the other parts, can have no action and no exiftence. The government is the point of reference of the feveral members and districts of our representation. This is the center of our unity. This government of reference is a trustee for the whole, and not for the parts. So is the other branch of our public council, I mean the house of lords. With us the king and the lords are feveral and joint fecurities for the equality of each district, each province, each city. When did you hear in Great Britain of any province fuffering from the inequality of its reprefentation; what diftrict from having no representation at all? Not only our monarchy and our peerage fecure the equality on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of the houfe of commons itself. The very inequality of reprefentation, which is fo foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents us from thinking or acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects as many members as all Scotland. But is Cornwall better taken care of than Scotland?

Few

Few trouble their heads about any of your bafes, out of fome giddy clubs. Moft of those, who wish for any change, upon any plaufible grounds, defire it on different ideas.

Your new conftitution is the very reverse of ours in its principle; and I am aftonished how any perfons could dream of holding out any thing done in it as an example for Great Britain. With you there is little, or rather no, connection between the laft representative and the first conftituent. The member who goes to the national affembly is not chofen by the people, nor accountable to them. There are three elections before he is chofen: two fets of magiftracy intervene between him and the primary affembly, fo as to render him, as I have faid, an ambaffador of a ftate, and not the reprefentative of the people within a ftate. By this the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any corrective your conftitution-mongers have devised render him any thing else than what heis. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce a confufion, if poffible, more horrid than the present. There is no way to make a connexion between the original conftituent and the representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidate to apply in the firft inftance to the primary electors, in order that by their authoritative inftructions (and fomething more perhaps) these primary electors may force the two fucceeding bodies of electors to make a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would plainly fubvert the whole fcheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult and confufion of popular election, which,

by their interpofed gradation elections, they mean to avoid, and at length to rifque the whole fortune of the ftate with thofe who have the leaft knowledge of it, and the leaft intereft in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have chofen. Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plain that they do not at all fubftantially elect to the affembly; indeed they elect as little in appearance as reality.

What is it we all feek for in an election? To anfwer its real purposes, you must firft poffefs the means of knowing the fitnefs of your man; and then you must retain fome hold upon him by perfonal obligation or dependence. For what end are thefe primary electors complimented, or rather mocked, with a choice? They can never know any thing of the qualities of him that is to ferve them, nor has he any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by thofe who have any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what relates to a perfonal choice. In cafe of abuse, that body of primary electors never can call the reprefentative to an account for his conduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain of reprefentation. If he acts improperly at the end of his two years leafe, it does not concern him for two years more. By the new French conftitution, the best and the wifeft reprefentatives go equally with the worft into this Limbus Patrum. Their bottoms are fuppofed foul, and they must go into dock to be refitted. Every man who has ferved in an affembly is ineligible for two years

after.

after. Just as thefe magiftrates begin to learn their trade, like chimney-fweepers, they are difqualified for exercifing it. Superficial, new, petulant acquifition, and interrupted, dronish, broken, ill recollection, is to be the deftined character of all your future governors. Your conftitution has too much of jealousy to have much of sense in it. You confider the breach of truft in the reprefentative fo principally, that you do not at all regard the queftion of his fitnefs to execute it.

This purgatory interval is not unfavourable to a faithlefs reprefentative, who may be as good a canvaffer as he was a bad governor. In this time he may cabal himself into a fuperiority over the wifeft and most virtuous. As, in the end, all the members of this elective conftitution are equally fugitive, and exift only for the election, they may be no longer the fame perfons who had chofen him, to whom he is to be responsible when he folicits for a renewal of his truft. To call all the fecondary electors of the Commune to account, is ridiculous, impracticable, and unjuft; they may themfelves have been deceived in their choice, as the third set of electors, thofe of the Department, may be in theirs. In your elections responsibility cannot exist.

Finding no fort of principle of coherence with each other in the nature and constitution of the feveral new republics of France, I confidered what cement the legiflators had provided for them from any extraneous materials. Their confederations, their fpectacles, their civic feafts, and their enthufiafm, I take no notice of; They are nothing but mere tricks; but tracing their policy through their

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