tely in reality appoint. The officers must
therefore look to their intrigues in the Assembly as the sole certain
road to promotion. Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must
begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for military
rank seems to me a contrivance, as well adapted as if it were studied
for no other end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative to
this vast military patronage,--and then to poison the corps of officers
with factions of a nature still more dangerous to the safety of
government, upon any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive
in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who lose
the promotions intended for them by the crown must become of a faction
opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected their claims, and
must nourish discontents in the heart of the army against the ruling
powers. Those officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their point
through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best only
second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of the
Assembly, must slight an authority which would not advance and could not
retard their promotion. If, to avoid these evils, you will have no other
rule for command or promotion than seniority, you will have an army of
formality; at the same time it will become more independent and more of
a military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is
not to be deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the command of
an army, he is nothing. What is the effect of a power placed nominally
at the head of the army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or
of fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object of
all things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. They
must be constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what their
necessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal
authority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing
through such a debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army will
not long look to an Assembly acting through the organ of false show and
palpable imposition. They will not seriously yield obedience to a
prisoner. They will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a
captive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not
greatly mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics.

It is besides to be considered, whet