ttach it more closely to
him, may take on himself to disregard the opinion of the _Notables_ in
this instance, and may call an equal representation of the people, in
which precedents will support him. In every event, I think the present
disquiet will end well. The nation has been awaked by our Revolution;
they feel their strength, they are enlightened, their lights are
spreading, and they will not retrograde. The first States General may
establish three important points, without opposition from the court; 1.
their own periodical convocation; 2. their exclusive right of taxation
(which has been confessed by the King); 3. the right of registering
laws, and of previously proposing amendments to them, as the parliaments
have, by usurpation, been in the habit of doing. The court will consent
to this, from its hatred to the parliaments, and from the desire of
having to do with one, rather than many legislatures. If the States are
prudent, they will not aim at more than this at first, lest they should
shock the dispositions of the court, and even alarm the public
mind, which must be left to open itself, by degrees, to successive
improvements. These will follow, from the nature of things: how far they
can proceed, in the end, towards a thorough reformation of abuse, cannot
be foreseen. In my opinion, a kind of influence, which none of their
plans of reform take into account, will elude them all; I mean the
influence of women in the government. The manners of the nation allow
them to visit, alone, all persons in office, to solicit the affairs of
the husband, family, or friends, and their solicitations bid defiance
to laws and regulations. This obstacle may seem less to those, who, like
our countrymen, are in the precious habit of considering right, as
a barrier against all solicitation. Nor can such an one, without the
evidence of his own eyes, believe in the desperate state to which things
are reduced in this country, from the omnipotence of an influence,
which, fortunately for the happiness of the sex itself, does not
endeavor to extend itself, in our country, beyond the domestic line.

Your communications to the Count de Moustier, whatever they may have
been, cannot have done injury to my endeavors here, to open the West
Indies to us. On this head, the ministers are invincibly mute, though I
have often tried to draw them into the subject. I have therefore found
it necessary to let it lie, till war, or other circumstances, may