e hundred and fifty proprietors are here from the
middle class.[2118] To these four hundred and fifty deputies, whose
condition, education, instruction, and mental range qualified them for
being good clerks, prominent men in a commune, honorable fathers of a
family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight
cures, their equals; this makes six hundred and fifty out of eleven
hundred and eighteen deputies, forming a positive majority, which,
again, is augmented by about fifty philosophical nobles, leaving out the
weak who follow the current, and the ambitious who range themselves on
the strong side.--We may divine what a chamber thus made up can do, and
those who are familiar with such matters prophesy what it will do.[2119]

"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American
minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by
experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much
imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."

It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an
inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They
would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would
construct in its place would founder before it left port.

If they would only consult the pilots and professional
shipbuilders!--There are several of such to be found around them, whom
they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free
countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The
Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation
of the States-General:[2120]

"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which
has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions,--I
preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of
the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the
pursuit of it."

Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At
the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to
induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the
King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury,
the habeas corpus, and a national legislature,--things which he could
certainly be made to adopt,--and then to retire into private life, and
let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they