mbly with equal
authenticity through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore,
of giving a direction to measures by the statement of an authorized
reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing.

To consider the French scheme of an executive officer, in its two
natural divisions of civil and political.--In the first it must be
observed, that, according to the new Constitution, the higher parts of
judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The king of
France is not the fountain of justice. The judges, neither the original
nor the appellate, are of his nomination. He neither proposes the
candidates nor has a negative on the choice. He is not even the public
prosecutor. He serves only as a notary, to authenticate the choice made
of the judges in the several districts. By his officers he is to execute
their sentence. When we look into the true nature of his authority, he
appears to be nothing more than a chief of bumbailiffs,
sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles, jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible to
place anything called royalty in a more degrading point of view. A
thousand times better it had been for the dignity of this unhappy
prince, that he had nothing at all to do with the administration of
justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable and all that is
consolatory in that function, without power of originating any process,
without a power of suspension, mitigation, or pardon. Everything in
justice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was not for
nothing that the Assembly has been at such pains to remove the stigma
from certain offices, when they were resolved to place the person who
had lately been their king in a situation but one degree above the
executioner, and in an office nearly of the same quality. It is not in
Nature, that, situated as the king of the French now is, he can respect
himself or can be respected by others.

View this new executive officer on the side of his political capacity,
as he acts under the orders of the National Assembly. To execute laws is
a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a
political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. It
is a trust, indeed, that has much depending upon its faithful and
diligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in all its
subordinates. Means of performing this duty ought to be given by
regulation; and dispositions towards it ought to be infused by the
circum