and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and reprefentatives they are, was fyftematically fubverted.

Were all these dreadful things neceffary? were they the inevitable refults of the defperate. ftruggle of determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult, to the quiet fhore of a tranquil and profperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which fhock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not the devaftation of civil war; they are the fad but inftructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are the difplay of inconfiderate and prefumptuous, because unrefifted and irrefiftible authority. The perfons who have thus fquandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the perfons who have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils (the last stake reserved for the ultimate ranfom of the ftate) have met in their progress with little, or rather with no oppofition at all. Their whole march was more like a triumphal proceffion than the progrefs of a Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished and laid every thing level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood have they fhed in the caufe of the country they have ruined. They have made no facrifices to their projects of greater confequence than their fhoebuckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king,

war.

murdering

murdering their fellow citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in poverty and diftrefs, thoufands of worthy men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the bafe refult of fear. It has been the effect of their fenfe of perfect fafety, in authorizing treafons, robberies, rapes, affaffinations, flaughters, and burnings throughout their harraffed land. But the cause of all was plain from the beginning.

This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not confider the compofition of the National Assembly; I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it now ftands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is compofed, which is of ten thousand times greater confequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were to know nothing of this Affembly but by its title and function, no colours could paint to the imagination any thing more venerable. In that light the mind of an enquirer, fubdued by fuch an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into a focus, would paufe and hefitate in condemning things even of the very worst afpect. Instead of blameable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no power, no function, no artificial inftitution whatsoever, can make the men of whom any fyftem of authority is compofed, any other than God, and nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond

9

beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither the one nor the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the engagement of nature, they have not the promife of revelation for any fuch powers.

After I had read over the lift of the perfons and defcriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing which they afterwards did could appear. aftonishing. Among them, indeed, I faw fome of known rank; fome of fhining talents; but of any practical experience in the ftate, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. But whatever the diftinguished few may have been, it is the fubftance and mass of the body which conftitutes its character, and must finally determine its direction. In all bodies,' thofe who will lead, must also, in a confiderable degree, follow. They must conform their propofitions to the taste, talent, and difpofition of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an Affembly is viciously or feebly compofed in a very great part of it, nothing but fuch a fupreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reafon cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talents diffeminated through it from becoming only the expert inftruments of abfurd projects! If what is the more likely event, instead of that unufual degree of virtue, they fhould be actuated by finifter ambition and a luft of meretricious glory, then the feeble part of the Affembly,

Affembly, to whom at firft they conform, becomes in its turn the dupe and inftrument of their defigns.. In this political traffick the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the followers to become fubfervient to the worst designs of their leaders.

To fecure any degree of fobriety in the propofitions made by the leaders in any public affembly, they ought to respect, in fome degree perhaps to fear, thofe whom they conduct. To be led any otherwife than blindly, the followers must be qualified, if not for, actors, at least for judges; they must also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing can fecure a fteady and moderate conduct in fuch affemblies, but that the body of them fhould be refpectably composed, in point of condition in life, of permanent property, of education, and of fuch habits as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.

In the calling of the ftates general of France, the first thing which ftruck me, was a great departure from the antient course. I found the reprefentation for the Third Eftate compofed of fix hundred perfons. They were equal in number to the reprefentatives of both the other orders. If the orders were to act feparately, the number the confideration of the moment. But when it

would not, beyond expence, be of much became apparent that

the three orders were to be melted down into one, the policy and neceffary effect of this numerous reprefentation became obvious. A

very fmall desertion from either of the other two orders muft throw the power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, the whole power of the ftate was foon refolved into that body. Its due compofition became therefore of infinitely the greater importance.

Judge, Sir, of my furprize, when I found that a very great proportion of the Affembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was compofed of practitioners in the law. It was compofed not of diftinguifhed magiftrates, who had given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and integrity; not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar; not of renowned profeffors in universities;-but for the far greater part, as it must in fuch a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely inftrumental members of the profeffion. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general compofition was of obfcure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurifdictions, country attornies, notaries, and the whole train of the minifters of municipal litigation, the fomentors and conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the moment I read the lift I faw diftinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profeffion is held becomes the ftandard of the eftimation in which the profeffors hold themselves. Whatever the perfonal merits of many indivi

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