of those for whom they were acting; but there was nothing of arrogance or rashness in their proceedings, and no longer any metaphysics.

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But to return to France. France, at the period we are now considering, chose a monarchy; but a monarch could not be set up, like a tall column on the surface of a plain, single and unsupported, and then expected to stand. Yet was this pretty nearly what the patriots of the National Assembly attempted. One of them talked of a royal democracy.' The question of the veto was, as you will see in the history of "The Two Friends," very fully discussed. I cannot, in a lecture like this, exhibit to you all these reasonings, which you ought to read fully stated in this history. In my last lecture, indeed, I referred to them, and gave you a specimen of them.

Mounier, Lally Tollendal, and others, above all Mirabeau, were for giving the monarch a veto absolutely and entirely, on all laws presented to him; Garat the younger, and other distinguished members, were quite of an opposite opinion; and both perfectly united in rejecting all compromise, all idea of a suspensive veto. Here, therefore, the three parties might have remained; but it was impossible that the sages of the Palais Royal and the statesmen of the streets of Paris should rest undisturbed spectators of these discussions, and the part they were likely to take may be easily imagined. You will have some proper notion of it from the "History of the Two Friends."

The prospect of falling again under the yoke of the nobles and the priests filled every mind, it seems, according to these historians, with indignation. No one could conceive, they said, how the representatives of the nation could dare to propose in the National Assembly to arm the royal authority with such a power as that of the veto absolute. It was in vain that wiser men endeavoured to restore a calm; nothing but perfidies and treasons were talked of; and in short it was resolved at the Café de Foy that a deputation should be sent to Versailles, to declare to the Assembly "that the secret practices of the aristocracy to procure the veto were well known, as were all the accomplices in this odious plot; that if they did not instantly renounce this their criminal league,

that five thousand men were ready to march; that the nation would be desired to recall such faithless representatives, and replace them with good citizens; and that the king and his son would be requested to repair to the Louvre, there to live secure in the midst of his faithful Parisians."

With great difficulty, by the exertions of the constituted authorities, of La Fayette, and some of the more reasonable of the popular orators, the storm was at last appeased. Some of the deputies from the Palais Royal, however, reached Versailles and the house of Lally Tollendal; they came to inform him, they said, "that Paris was not for the veto; that it regarded as traitors, those that were; and that it punished traitors;" and many of the members were named and already menaced with proscription.

Lally Tollendal replied with spirit and propriety, and went with them to the Assembly. Similar communications, it was there found, had been made to others; anonymous letters to the president and secretaries, filled with the most furious menaces. Two hundred torches were ready to set fire to the chateaux of certain of the members, as an intimation, in the first place, of what they were afterwards to expect. The Assembly was universally indignant. Clermont de Tonnerre and Mounier spoke with their usual force and eloquence.

Such, according to these historians, were the beginnings of troubles, and as such I mention them to you. They ought to have warned the more warm partisans of liberty how perilous was the situation in which the Revolution was already placed.

The next great question was the permanence of the Assembly and its organization, whether two houses or one. The reasonings were all founded on a terror of the executive power. It was evident, they said, that a permanent body, for instance, would more easily restrain the executive power within its proper limits. The moral force of the Assembly, if consisting of only one house, and the consequent spirit of its deliberations, would form a much better counterpoise than could be found, if the Assembly were to be divided into two, and by its very composition be thrown into a state of equilibrium. On the first supposition the veto of the king would have its meaning and necessity, but in the second it was but a wheel useless,

and therefore dangerous, to the machinery. In this manner proceeded the reasoning, according to the historians; and in short the conclusion was, that there was a necessity that the constitution should be settled and strengthened; that incessant efforts were required from the constantly recurring exigences of the community; that details of every kind made it expedient that the whole system should be regenerated; and that all these concurred in powerfully demanding from the community an universal vote for the presence, the activity, and decidedly the permanence, or rather the constant existence, every year renewed, of the National Assembly.

Such were the general notions of the public, according to these historians, at this critical period. Calling to mind all that we have seen, it is very grievous to observe the mistaken apprehensions that were entertained, the total blindness that prevailed, with regard to the real seat of the danger. No doubt it is a testimony to prove how wretched and how oppressive had been the ancient government, with its own abuses, and the abuses of its aristocracy, when men seemed to have no terror but of its return. But the whole may still be held up as a warning to all future patriots, of whatever country, never to withdraw a society entirely from its accustomed restraints; to alter, to modify them, to substitute others more convenient, but never to clear away the ground in the first place, and remove the old building, as the necessary preparation for the erection of a new one. We have not to Ideal with the insensate materials of stone and mortar, but human beings incapable of rest, or even suspense, if roused; exposed to misapprehension, highly selfish, and always the mere slaves of the present uneasiness.

The conduct of the friends of freedom at this particular epoch of the Revolution is the more inexcusable, because the great leader, Mirabeau, spoke the words, and in his own forcible manner, both of wisdom and even prophecy.

"For myself," said he from the tribune, " I consider the veto of the king as so necessary, that I would rather live in Constantinople than in France, if it be not granted. Yes, I do declare it, I know of nothing so terrible as a sovereign aristocracy of six hundred persons, who, making themselves per

manent to-morrow, will make themselves hereditary the next day, and finish, as the aristocrats of every country on the face of the globe have always done, by leaving no power in existence that they did not invade and absorb."

It is but justice, too, to Lally Tollendal, Mounier, and other wise and good men, that they proposed to their countrymen, as I have already mentioned to you, a system of government, which, if it could but have met the opinions and expectations of the Assembly and the public, all might have been well. The friends of freedom would have had a good case, its enemies none; the king would have been satisfied, and the nation happy; and Europe saved from a series of the most tremendous crimes and miseries that ever afflicted and terrified the civilized world since the irruptions of the northern nations.

You will observe, or rather remember what I intimated yesterday, that in the name of the committee of the constitution (the committee of five), M. de Lally Tollendal had made the following report:

"1st. The legislative body shall be composed of three parts, the king, a senate, and the representatives of the nation." Two houses, you observe, as in England, and the king.

2ndly. It is the right and duty of the king to convoke the legislative body at epochs fixed by the constitution. He may prorogue and even dissolve it, if at the same time he call a new one." The power of dissolution, you see, given, without which any thing else that might be given was totally vain.

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3rdly. The taxes are in every respect to come from the representative body on the requisition of the king, and the senate are on this occasion merely to consent or reject simply, and no more.

4thly. The senate is to be the tribunal in all state delinquencies.

"5thly. Each house is to judge of what concerns its own police and particular rights."

By the 7th article, the royal sanction is necessary to every law.

'8thly. The initiative of every law and the mode of enactment belongs to the two houses; the sanction, to the king." 10thly. The two houses are to have the negatives each

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upon the other; the king upon them both. The senate to be elected for life."

Even here there was nothing said of the army and the necessary patronage of the crown; but the whole was evidently in the right tone and spirit. The example of England was taken advantage of; experience was made a guide. Proper prerogatives might have been introduced into the system for the support of the executive power; the whole might have been rendered such, that the king might have acceded to it without degradation, and therefore with sincerity. And now there is seen the accusation of the more warm and enthusiastic supporters of the new opinions in the National Assembly. No system of this kind was thought possible for France.

A scheme of organization like this, say the historians, the Two Friends of Liberty, was universally disrelished. The basis of it was, as every one saw, the famous balance of the three powers, and the example of the constitution of England. But neither the authority of Montesquieu, they observe, nor the logical reasoning of Mounier, nor the eloquence of Lally, could reconcile it to the friends of freedom. They could see in it but an asylum for the ancient aristocracy, the cradle of a new one, still more dangerous, as it planted corruption in the very bosom of the Assembly; an allurement to the ambitious, and a nourishment for all those unhappy prejudices of distinction and pre-eminence, so contrary to the spirit of the new constitution.

The Assembly, indeed, ordered it to be printed, out of respect to its own committee; but submitted it not to discussion, article by article, out of respect to the judgment of the public, already most clearly expressed.

It was, however, examined, continues the historian, and refuted in all its points (refuted, you will observe), during the discussion of the three great questions at issue, the veto, the permanence, and the organization of the Assembly. Due homage was paid to the wisdom of the English constitution, but examples, it was said, are in politics apt to deceive. The constitution of a people ought to be accommodated to its character, opinions, and manners: often modified by local circumstances; so that an institution that will prosper in one country will cause the ruin of another. Such were the