ght-and-forty
millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of
quality who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At
present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of
Nature. The property of France does not govern it. Of course property
is destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing
constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the
territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three
independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be set in motion by
the impulse of one mind? When the National Assembly has completed its
work, it will have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will not
long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will not
bear that this one body should monopolize the captivity of the king, and
the dominion over the assembly calling itself national. Each will keep
its own portion of the spoil of the Church to itself; and it will not
suffer either that spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or
the natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence or
pamper the luxury of the mechanics of Paris. In this they will see none
of the equality, under the pretence of which they have been tempted to
throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the ancient
constitution of their country. There can be no capital city in such a
constitution as they have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they
framed democratic governments, they had virtually dismembered their
country. The person whom they persevere in calling king has not power
left to him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this
collection of republics. The republic of Paris will endeavor, indeed, to
complete the debauchery of the army, and illegally to perpetuate the
Assembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of
continuing its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heart
of a boundless paper circulation, to draw everything to itself: but in
vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is now
violent.

* * * * *

If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which you
were called, as it were by the voice of God and man, I cannot find it in
my heart to