in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode of the new
elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of
the small degree of internal control existing in a minority chosen
originally from various interests, and preserving something of their
spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must be worse than the present.
The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their
successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by
emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. To
suppose such an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.

Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything at
once, have forgot one thing that seems essential, and which, I believe,
never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by any
projector of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a _senate_, or
something of that nature and character. Never, before this time, was
heard of a body politic composed of one legislative and active assembly,
and its executive officers, without such a council: without something to
which foreign states might connect themselves,--something to which, in
the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up,--something
which might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something like
consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally
have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but it seems to be
in the very essence of a republican government. It holds a sort of
middle place between the supreme power exercised by the people, or
immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive. Of this there
are no traces in your Constitution; and in providing nothing of this
kind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything else,
discovered a sovereign incapacity.

Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done towards the formation of
an executive power. For this they have chosen a degraded king. This
their first executive officer is to be a machine, without any sort of
deliberative discretion in any one act of his function. At best, he is
but a channel to convey to the National Assembly such matter as may
import that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the
power would not have been without its importance, though infinitely
perilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But public
intelligence and statement of facts may pass to the Asse