e orders to you; you must hasten to offer all that sound minds can
desire, within reasonable limits, whether of authority or of national
rights.

"Everything ought to be foreseen and calculated in the king's council
before the opening of the States-general. You ought to determine what
can be given up without danger in ancient usages, forms, maxims,
institutions, obsolete or full of abuses. All that the public experience
and reason denounce to you as proscribed, take heed that you do not
defend; but do not be so imprudent as to commit to the risks of a
tumultuous deliberation the fundamental basis and the essential springs
of the kingly authority. Commence by liberally granting the requirements
and wishes of the public, and prepare yourselves to defend, even by
force, all that violent, factious, and extravagant systems would assail.
In the state of uncertainty, embarrassment, and denudation in which you
have placed yourselves, you have no strength, I can feel, I can see. Get
out, then, of this state; put fresh energy into your concessions, into
your plans; in a word, take up a decided attitude, for you have it not.

"The revolution which is at this instant being effected, and which we may
regard as accomplished, is the elevation of the commons to an influence
equal to that of the two other orders. Another revolution must follow
that, and it is for you to carry it out: that is the destruction of
privileges fraught with abuse and onerous to the people. When I say that
it is for you to carry it out, I mean that you must take your measures in
such wise as to prevent anything from being done without you, and
otherwise than by your direction.

"Thus, then, you should have a fixed plan of concessions, of reforms,
which, instead of upsetting everything, will consolidate the basis of
legitimate authority. This plan should become, by your influence, the
text of all the bailiwick memorials. God forbid that I should propose to
you to bribe, to seduce, to obtain influence by iniquitous means over the
elections! You need, on the contrary, the most honest, the most
enlightened, the most energetic men. Such are those who must be brought
to the front, and on whom the choice should be made to fall."

Admirable counsels on the part of the most honest and most far-sighted of
minds; difficult, however, if not impossible, to be put into practice by
feeble ministers, themselves still undecided on the very brink of the
abyss, havin