questionable, ambiguous,
and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; but
their disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs
must remain the same.

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other
descriptions, of more sober minds and more enlarged understandings. Were
they, then, to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful dignity
of a handful of country clowns, who have seats in that assembly, some of
whom are said not to be able to read and write,--and by not a greater
number of traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and more
conspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything beyond
their counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be
overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers than to
become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, the
whole must needs be governed by them.

To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the
faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the
law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore,
must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity.
But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they
do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for forming
statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds,
who must be eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth
for the more solid substance of land. To these were joined men of other
descriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the
interests of a great state was to be expected, and as little regard to
the stability of any institution,--men formed to be instruments, not
controls.--Such, in general, was the composition of the _Tiers Etat_ in
the National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the
slightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of the
country.

We know that the British House of Commons, without shutting its doors to
any merit in any class, is, by the sure operation of adequate causes,
filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary
and in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil,
naval, and politic distinction, that the country can afford. But
supposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House of
Commons should be composed in the same manner with the