ing confidence are the sole qualifications for a
perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The
true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to
love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his
temperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but
his movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement,
as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means.
There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that
union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our
patience will achieve more than our force. If I might venture to appeal
to what is so much out of fashion in Paris,--I mean to experience,--I
should tell you, that in my course I have known, and, according to my
measure, have cooeperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were
much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the
business. By a slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of each
step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to us
in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety
through the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not
clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided
for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to
another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to
unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending
principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence
arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an
excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are
concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession
ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply
to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the
aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of
things that the best legislators have been often satisfied with the
establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in
government,--a power like that which some of the philosophers have
called a plastic Nature; and having fixed the principle, they have left
it afterwards to its own operation.

To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presiding
principle and