he 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 promise of revelation,
for any such powers. Judge, sir, of my surprise when I found that a very
great proportion of the assembly was composed of practitioners in the
law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, not of leading
advocates, not of renowned professors; the general composition was of
obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions,
country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of
municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of
village vexation.

From the moment I read the list I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it
happened, all that was to follow. Who could but conceive that men who
are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious
dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old
condition of low and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at
any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must
pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well? It
was inevitable; it was planted in the nature of things.

Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they
attempted changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by
advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled. Such was
our Cromwell, one of the great bad men of the old stamp. Such were your
whole race of Guises, Condes, Colignys, and Richelieus. These men, among
all their massacres, did not slay the _mind_ in their country. A
conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense of glory and
emulation, was not extinguished. But your present confusion, like a
palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your
country in a situation to be actuated by principles of honour is
disgraced and degraded. Property is destroyed, and rational liberty has
no existence. If this be your actual situation, as compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by the voice of God and
man, I cannot find it in my heart to congratulate you on the choice you
have made, or the success which has attended your endeavours.

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far as my heart from
withholding in practice, the _real_ rights