the various objects in their local or their general government. The rota, which the French have established for their National Assembly, holds out the highest objects of ambition to such vast multitudes as, in an unexampled measure, to widen the bottom of a new species of interest merely political, and wholly unconnected with birth or property. This scheme of a rota, though it enfeebles the state, considered as one solid body, and indeed wholly disables it from acting as such, gives a great, an equal, and a diffusive strength to the democratick scheme. Seven hundred and fifty people, every two years raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen hundred bold, acting politicians; a great number for even so great a country as France. These men never will quietly settle in ordinary occupations, nor submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful, but obscure and unimportant industry. Whilst they sit in the Assembly they are denied offices of trust and profit -but their short duration makes this no restraint -during their probation and apprenticeship they are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense; and, after they have passed the novitiate, those who take any sort of lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.

This

This supply of recruits to the corps of the highest civil ambition goes on with a regular progression. In very few years it must amount to many thousands. These, however, will be as nothing in comparison to the multitude of municipal officers, and officers of district and department, of all sorts, who have tasted of power and profit, and who hunger for the periodical return of the meal. To these needy agitators, the glory of the state, the general wealth and prosperity of the nation, and the rise or fall of public credit, are as dreams; nor have arguments deduced from these topicks any sort of weight with them. The indifference with which the Assembly regards the state of their colonies, the only valuable part of the French commerce, is a full proof how little they are likely to be affected by any thing but the selfish game of their own ambition, now universally diffused.

bility of re

It is true, amidst all these turbulent means of Impracticasecurity to their system, very great discontents sistance. every where prevail. But they only produce misery to those who nurse them at home, or exile, beggary, and in the end confiscation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them. Each municipal republick has a committee, or something in the nature of a committee of research. In these petty republicks the tyranny is so near its object, that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy

in its very first movements. Their power is absolute and uncontroulable. No stand can be made against it. These republicks are besides so disconnected, that very little intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained, beyond their own bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant correspondence, and who give what colour they please to such facts as they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspondence. They all have some sort of communication, just as much or as little as they please, with the centre. By this confinement of all communication to the ruling faction, any combination, grounded on the abuses and discontents in one, scarcely can reach the other. There is not one man, in any one place, to head them. The old government had so much abstracted the nobility from the cultivation of provincial interest, that no man in France exists, whose power, credit, or consequence, extends to two districts, or who is capable of uniting them in any design, even if any man could assemble ten men together, without being sure of a speedy lodging in a prison. One must not judge of the state of France by what has been observed elsewhere. It does not in the least resemble any other country. Analogical reasoning from history or from recent experience in other places is wholly delusive.

In my opinion there never was seen so strong a government internally as that of the French municipalities.

cipalities. If ever any rebellion can arise against the present system, it must begin, where the Revolution which gave birth to it did, at the capital. Paris is the only place in which there is the least. freedom of intercourse. But even there, so many servants as any man has, so many spies, and irreconcilable domestick enemies.

are fugi

But that place being the chief seat of the power Gentlemen and intelligence of the ruling faction, and the place tives. of occasional resort for their fiercest spirits, even there a revolution is not likely to have any thing to feed it. The leaders of the aristocratick party have been drawn out of the kingdom by order of the princes, on the hopes held out by the emperour and the king of Prussia at Pilnitz; and as to the democratick factions in Paris, amongst them there are no leaders possessed of an influence for any other purpose but that of maintaining the present state of things. The moment they are seen to warp, they are reduced to nothing. They have no attached army-no party that is at all personal.

It is not to be imagined because a political system is, under certain aspects, very unwise in its contrivance, and very mischievous in its effects, that it therefore can have no long duration. Its very defects may tend to its stability, because they are agreeable to its nature. The very faults in the constitution of Poland made it last; the veto which destroyed all its energy preserved its life. What

E 4

Conclusions.

Proceeding of princes;

Plans,

What can be conceived so monstrous as the republick of Algiers? and that no less strange republick of the Mamalukes in Egypt? They are of the worst form imaginable, and exercised in the worst manner, yet they have existed as a nuisance on the earth for several hundred years.

From all these considerations, and many more that crowd upon me, three conclusions have long since arisen in my mind

First, that no counter-revolution is to be expected in France, from internal causes solely.

Secondly, that the longer the present system exists, the greater will be its strength; the greater its power to destroy discontents at home, and to resist all foreign attempts in favour of these dis

contents.

Thirdly, that as long as it exists in France, it will be the interest of the managers there, and it is in the very essence of their plan, to disturb and distract all other governments, and their endless succession of restless politicians will continually stimulate them to new attempts.

Princes are generally sensible that this is their defensive common cause; and two of them have made a publick declaration of their opinion to this effect. Against this common danger, some of them, such as the king of Spain, the king of Sardinia, and the republick of Berne, are very diligent in using defensive measures.