instinct is so sage, would take so much pains to amass provisions, to deposit them in the trunks of trees, to build their houses of wax, and to live to gether in unity, unless they had to contend with the winds, with the rain, the winter, and many other different enemies: external wars ensure their internal concord. What is very remarkable, each swarm has a Moderator in their Queen. The same thing takes place in the habitations of ants, and I believe of all animals which live in Republics. Happy would it be for human societies, if they had to encounter in like manner only the ob stacles presented by the hand of Nature! Their enjoyments would extend over the face of the whole Earth, the productions of which they are destined to reap; the human race would formı but one family, whereof every individual would stand in need of no other Moderator but GOD and his own conscience. But in our badly constituted States, we find all valuable property of every kind accumulated on a small number of individuals thus, unable to demand them at the hand of Nature, we are obliged to dispute possession with men, and to direct our powers against ourselves,

These principles being laid down, I find our French Government constituted like all those which, from their origin, have deviated from the Laws of Nature. It is divided into two powers which serve as a mutual counterbalance. The one consists of the Clerical Order and that of the Nobility, who have for several ages past united their interests; the other, of the order of the People, who are beginning to acquire illumination respect

ing their own. But they are very far from being counterbalanced. Some of our Kings have indeed attempted to establish the equilibrium, by throwing some weight into the scale of the People, from the erection of the Communes, of Municipal Offices, and of Parliaments; but the members of these bodies having most of them a tendency toward the privileges of the Nobility, and the benefices of the Clergy, the interests of the People have remained without a defender. A few isolated writers alone, who, animated with zeal for those of Mankind, have been the only Representatives of the People, and have set up secret tribunes for them even in the conscience of the great. The King, however, is as much interested as the People, in the maintenance of the political equilibrium, as he is the Moderator of it, and ast one of the powers which ought to be balanced cannot exceed the other, without his finding himself deranged, and rendered incapable of putting any one in motion.

Not only ought all the Members of the political' body to be in equilibrium for the interest of the People; but to the People also, and to them alone, ought to be referred every particular interest. But the Clergy and the Nobility are precisely the contrary of what they ought to be, and from what they originally have been; for they are formed into a coalition of particular interests entirely separated from the cause of the People.

When the King, the Clergy and the Nobility of a State form one body with their People, they resemble the branches of a great tree which, notwithstanding the violence of the tempest, are restored

stored to their equilibrium by the trunk which bears and unites them. But when these powers. have centres different from the People, they are like those trees which grow by chance on the summit of an old tower: they for some time decorate it's battlements; but with the lapse of ages, their roots force a passage between the layers of stones, separate their joinings, and terminate in the subversion of the monument which once supe ported them.

The King, the Clergy and the Nobility have a relation so necessary with the People, that it is by means of it alone they have themselves common relations with each other. But for the People they would be separated in interests as in functions. They resemble the branches of a tree which all have a tendency to diverge, and which have no principle of union among themselves except the trunk which combines them. Though this comparison may be very proper to render intelligible the popular inter-connections to which I wish to lead our political powers, yet as these mutual connexions have hitherto no existence among us, and as we must distinguish into corps which have separate centres, the members of the same whole, I shall employ an image better adapted to represent the existing whole of our Estates-General, and to flatter the pretensions of the superior Orders. I consider then the King as the sun, the emblem of which is that of his illustrious ancestors; the Clergy and Nobility as two planetary bodies revolving round the Sun, and reflecting his light; and the People as the obscure globe of the earth

which we trample under our feet, but which never-
theless supports and feeds us.
Let the powers of
the Nation consider themselves therefore as pow-
ers of Heaven, which in some other respects they
pretend to be; but let them recollect at the same
time, that notwithstanding the privileges which
they enjoy of moving in their particular sphere,
and of approaching that of the sun, they are not
the less on that account adapted to the sphere of
the People, seeing the sun himself, with all his
splendour, exists in the Heavens only for the har-
monies of the Earth and of the smallest plants
on her surface.

I shall put up prayers therefore for the harmony of the four Orders which at this day compose the Nation, beginning with him who is the prime mover in it.

WISHES FOR THE KING.

MANY writers of high reputation consider the national power in a Monarchy, as divided into two; into a legislative power and an executive power; they assign the former to the Nation, and the latter to the King.

This division appears to me defective, for it omits a third power essential to every good Government, the moderating power, which in Monarchy belongs exclusively to the Sovereign., Here the King is not the simple Commissioner of the Nation merely, a Doge or a Stadtholder: he. is a Monarch invested with the charge of directing the public operations. The Clergy, the No. bility, and even the People, only see and regulate each, one in particular, detached parts of the Monarchy,

1

narchy, of which they are members only; the King is the heart of it, and is alone capable of knowing and of putting in motion the combined whole. The three bodies of which Monarchy is composed are continually re-acting one against another, so that left to themselves,it would speedily come to pass that one of them must oppress the other two, or be oppressed by them, without it's being possible for the King, who would have the executive power only, to do any thing else but become the agent of the strongest party, that is of oppression. The Sovereign must therefore have besides the moderating power, that is to say, the power of maintaining the equilibrium, not only between those bodies, but to unite their force externally in opposition to foreign powers, whose enr terprizes he alone is in a condition to know. It is the moderating power which constitutes the Mor narch,

"

The writers to whom I alluded, have had a perception of the necessity of this power, in the King, and have made it a question whether it ought to consist in a simple veto, as in England, or in a certain number of deliberate voices, to be reserved to him as his royal prerogative.

The veto is an inert power capable of defeeting the best concerted projects, The King on the contrary ought to be vested with a power of activity capable of giving them energy and success. The heart in the human frame, is never in a state of inaction; the same ought to be the case of the Sovereign in a Monarchy.

As to deliberative voices to be reserved to the

4