, with less awe and
reverence than that which is usually conceded to a settled and
recognized authority.

In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds upon
principles the most opposite from those which appear to direct them in
the use of it. An observation on this difference will let us into the
true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they have done, or
continue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is by the most
common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have
done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and
violences, you can find nothing at all that is new. They follow
precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader.
They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and
usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good the
spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the whole to
the mercy of untried speculations; they abandon the dearest interests of
the public to those loose theories to which none of them would choose to
trust the slightest of his private concerns. They make this difference,
because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are
thoroughly in earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The public
interests, because about them they have no real solicitude, they abandon
wholly to chance: I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing in
experience to prove their tendency beneficial.

We must always see with a pity not unmixed with respect the errors of
those who are timid and doubtful of themselves with regard to points
wherein the happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these gentlemen
there is nothing of the tender parental solicitude which fears to cut up
the infant for the sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their
promises and the confidence of their predictions they far outdo all the
boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions in a manner
provokes and challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation.

I am convinced that there are men of considerable parts among the
popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquence
in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerful
and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist without a proportionable
degree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish.
What they have done towards the support of their system bespeaks n