at Assembly or of these
corporations. However, to be subject to the pleasure of that Assembly is
not to be subject to law, either for protection or for constraint.

This establishment of judges as yet wants something to its completion.
It is to be crowned by a new tribunal. This is to be a grand state
judicature; and it is to judge of crimes committed against the nation,
that is, against the power of the Assembly. It seems as if they had
something in their view of the nature of the high court of justice
erected in England during the time of the great usurpation. As they have
not yet finished this part of the scheme, it is impossible to form a
direct judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken to form it
in a spirit very different from that which has guided them in their
proceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, subservient to
their inquisition, _the Committee of Research_, will extinguish the last
sparks of liberty in France, and settle the most dreadful and arbitrary
tyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to give to this tribunal
any appearance of liberty and justice, they must not evoke from or send
to it the causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure. They
must also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic of
Paris.[126]

Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army than
what is discoverable in your plan of judicature? The able arrangement of
this part is the more difficult, and requires the greater skill and
attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third
cementing principle in the new body of republics which you call the
French nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that army may become
at last. You have voted a very large one, and on good appointments, at
least fully equal to your apparent means of payment. But what is the
principle of its discipline? or whom is it to obey? You have got the
wolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which you
have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced
for a free deliberation relatively to that army, or to anything else.

The minister and secretary of state for the War Department is M. de La
Tour du Pin. This gentleman, like his colleagues in administration, is a
most zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the
new Constitution which originated in that event. His statement of facts
relative to the military