21] These _Communes_, chosen by the _Canton_, choose to the
_Department_; and the deputies of the _Department_ choose their deputies
to the _National Assembly_. Here is a third barrier of a senseless
qualification. Every deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct
contribution, to the value of a _mark of silver_. Of all these
qualifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent to
secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men.

In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to
consider only _population_, upon a principle of natural right, there is
a manifest attention to _property_,--which, however just and reasonable
on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.

When they come to their third basis, that of _Contribution_, we find
that they have more completely lost sight of the rights of men. This
last basis rests _entirely_ on property. A principle totally different
from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby
admitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is
subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to
approximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. The
additional share in the third portion of representation (a portion
reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the
_district_ only, and not the individuals in it who pay. It is easy to
perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they were
embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and the
privileges of riches. The Committee of Constitution do as good as admit
that they are wholly irreconcilable. "The relation with regard to the
contributions is without doubt _null_, (say they,) when the question is
on the balance of the political rights as between individual and
individual; without which _personal equality would be destroyed_, and
_an aristocracy of the rich_ would be established. But this
inconvenience entirely disappears, when the proportional relation of the
contribution is only considered in the _great masses_, and is solely
between province and province; it serves in that case only to form a
just reciprocal proportion between the cities, without affecting the
personal rights of the citizens."

Here the principle of _contribution_, as taken between man and man, is
reprobated as _null_, and destructive to equality,--and as pernicious,
too, because it leads to the estab