bearing us aloft." The trunk replied: "Ungrate"ful daughters, it is I who gave you birth, and it is "from the bosom of the sands that my sap nou"rishes you, generates your fruits to re-produce "them, and exalt you to the Heavens to preserve "them; it is my strength which supports at that "height your weakness against the fury of the "winds." Scarcely had he spoken, when a hurricane issuing from the Indian Ocean spread devastation over the Country. The palm-branches are tossed down to the ground, are tossed upward again, are dashed against each other, and stripped, by the noisy tempest, of their fruits. The trunk meanwhile maintains it's ground; not one of it's roots but what attracts and sustains from the bos som of the earth, the branches agitated in the higher region of the air. Tranquillity being rerestored, the branches reduced to a fruitless foliage, offered to their trunk to place their fruits hence forth as a common deposit on his head, and to preserve them to their utmost by covering them with their leaves. To this the palm-tree consented, and ever since this agreement, the stately plant bears aloft on it's stem it's long rows of fruit up to the regions of the winds, without fearing the violence of the storm: it's trunk is become the symbol of strength, and it's branches that of glory and virtue...

The palm-tree is the State; it's trunk and fruits are the People and their productive labours; the hurricanes are it's enemies; the palm-branches of the State are the Naïrs and the Bramins, wheu transformed into the friends of the People.

WISHES FOR THE PEOPLE.

THE term Tiers-Etat (Third Estate) is a very strange one, the appellation given in France to the People, that is to more than twenty millions of men, by the Clergy and Nobility, who taken together do not constitute at most the fortieth part of the Nation. I do not believe that such a denomination exists in any other country of the World. What would the Roman People have said, a Nation divided like ours into three orders under the Emperors, had their Senators and Knights presumed to give them the name of Tiers-Etat? What would the People of England say if such a definition were given of them by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the Upper House of Parliament? Is the French People less respectable in the eyes of the orders which they support as the means of promoting national prosperity and glory?

In every country the People is all in all: but if it is considered as an isolated body, relatively to the other bodies which in conjunction with it constitute the State, it is, as has been demonstrated, the first in point of antiquity, of utility, in number and power, as the power of the other bodies emanates from them, and exists only for them.

It seems to me reasonable therefore that the body of the People should preserve it's proper name, as the bodies of the Clergy and Nobility have done, and that it should be denominated the order of the People. In place of the name of Tiers-Etat might be substituted if you will that of Commons, as is the case in England, and which

has

has frequently been adopted among ourselves. This term commons characterizes in particular the people of every Province of the Kingdom, in all ages denominated by the appellation of the communes of Dauphiné, of Brittany, of Normandy, &c. who united from the communes of the Kingdom. This name of Commons has never been given to any but the People, as might be proved by the authority of Writers who best understood the meaning of expresssions, especially that of La Fontaine. In truth, the interests of the People are common not only to each Province, but to the other orders of the Nation, because their felicity constitutes the general félicity. This does not

hold good as to the interests of the other orders, which are peculiar to themselves. On the other hand, the name of Tiers-Etat given to the People, supposes, as J. J. Rousseau has very well remarked, that it's interest is only the third, though it be in it's own nature the first. Now as men form at the long-run their ideas, not on things, but on words, justice demands that the surname of TiersEtat, imposed on the people for some ages past by the privileged bodies, because it reminded them of their privileges, should be replaced by that of commons, which it has at all times enjoyed, that it may remind all of the common interest. Salus populi suprema lex esto: Let the safety of the

People be the Supreme Law.

Well-meaning patriots, commiserating the wretched condition of the country people, have proposed to form them into a body different from those of the cities; but this must be guarded

against

against with extreme caution. Division into corps involves division of interests. The peasantry ought to be sufficiently represented in the Provincial Assemblies, and in the National Assembly; their demands ought in these to have a preferable consideration: but it appears to me extremely dangerous to make any distinction in the Assemblies between the commons of the country and those of the Cities, for their interest are inseparable. The commerce of the Cities can prosper only by the labours of agriculture, and the labours of agriculture only by the commerce of the Cities.

The power of a Nation depends entirely on the union of it's parts. The higher branches of a tree may diverge, but not the fibres of it's trunk, which ought to be compacted under the same bark. Were it possible to divide the trunk of a tree into branches, an oak would be reduced to a bush; but were all the branches of a bush compacted into a single trunk, of a bush you might form an oak, This presents a very lively image of what has actually taken place in several States. How many

Kingdoms have been reduced to bushes in a vast extent of territory, because their trunk ramified only into Nobles and Priests! Look at Spain and Italy. How many Monarchies and Republics have risen into oaks, cedars and palm-trees in small territories, because the Nobility and Clergy are conglomerated into one mass with the People, and have but one common interest with them! Look at England and Holland, Call to remembrance the force of the Roman Empire, in which the Nobles knew no glory but that of the People.

1

The

The power of a Nation, I repeat it, depends entirely on the union of it's parts. The miseries of our own People have arisen from this, that the Clergy and Nobility have among us formed two orders separated from their interests; those miseries never began to diminish till despotism, mauners, and above all philosophy, brought them to a state of approximation. It is no less true that counterbalancing powers are as necessary to the harmony of a State as they are to that of Europe, but there will ever be but too many interests to divide men in the same Society, were there no other but those of fortune. The corps of the Nobility and Clergy in our political order, ought to be the reverse of what they are: instead of uniting together against the People, they ought to struggle against each other in favour of the popular in terest, as the Nations of Europe contend for the freedom of their commerce, of their navigation, of their fisheries, or for any other pretext which may interest the natural rights of mankind: it is this right which they incessantly invoke. The commons of France ought to govern themselves, at least as to form, by the same laws which regulate the community of the Human Race.

In pointing out the means of bringing the Clergy and Nobility into contact with the People, I have likewise indicated those of drawing the People closer to these two orders, not by the sentiment of ambition, which is calculated only to separate the members of a State, but that of virtue which unites them. Our people have a propensity but too powerful to rise; education and example are connually pushing them upward. They ought to be

invited