ty in itself, any attachment to it is equally as absurd. It is
neither instinct or reason; and if this attachment is what is called
royalism in France, then is a royalist inferior in character to every
species of the animal world; for what can that being be who acts neither
by instinct nor by reason? Such a being merits rather our derision
than our pity; and it is only when it assumes to act its folly that it
becomes capable of provoking republican indignation. In every other
case it is too contemptible to excite anger. For my own part, when I
contemplate the self-evident absurdity of the thing, I can scarcely
permit myself to believe that there exists in the high-minded nation of
France such a mean and silly animal as a royalist.

As it requires but a single glance of thought to see (as is before said)
that all the parts of which government is composed must be at all times
in a state of full maturity, it was not possible that men acting under
the influence of reason, could, in forming a Constitution, admit an
hereditary Executive, any more than an hereditary Legislature. I go
therefore to examine the other cases.

In the first place, (rejecting the hereditary system,) shall the
Executive by election be an _individual or a plurality_.

An individual by election is almost as bad as the hereditary system,
except that there is always a better chance of not having an idiot. But
he will never be any thing more than a chief of a party, and none but
those of that party will have access to him. He will have no person
to consult with of a standing equal with himself, and consequently be
deprived of the advantages arising from equal discussion.

Those whom he admits in consultation will be ministers of his own
appointment, who, if they displease by their advice, must expect to
be dismissed. The authority also is too great, and the business too
complicated, to be intrusted to the ambition or the judgment of an
individual; and besides these cases, the sudden change of measures
that might follow by the going out of an individual Executive, and the
election of a new one, would hold the affairs of a nation in a state of
perpetual uncertainty. We come then to the case of a plural Executive.

It must be sufficiently plural, to give opportunity to discuss all the
various subjects that in the course of national business may come before
it; and yet not so numerous as to endanger the necessary secrecy that
certain cases, such as those o