dversaries.

[Sidenote: Effects of the rota.]

The _truly_ active citizens, that is, the above descriptions, are all
concerned in intrigue respecting 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
democratic 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 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 topics 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 anything but the selfish game of their own
ambition, now universally diff