Some decent, regulated
preeminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to
birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.
It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred
thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of
arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post
for its second: to men who _may_ reason calmly it is ridiculous The will
of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will
be the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of five
hundred country attorneys and obscure curates is not good for
twenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-forty
millions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons of
quality who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At
present, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road of
Nature. The property of France does not govern it. Of course property
is destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing
constitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that the
territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three
independent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be set in motion by
the impulse of one mind? When the National Assembly has completed its
work, it will have accomplished its ruin.
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