We see a body without
fundamental laws, without established maxims, without respected rules of
proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever. Their
idea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of
legislative competency, and their examples for common cases from the
exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in most
respects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode of the new
elections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged of
the small degree of internal control existing in a minority chosen
originally from various interests, and preserving something of their
spirit. If possible, the next Assembly must be worse than the present.
The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to their
successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by
emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. To
suppose such an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything at
once, have forgot one thing that seems essential, and which, I believe,
never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by any
projector of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a _senate_, or
something of that nature and character. Never, before this time, was
heard of a body politic composed of one legislative and active assembly,
and its executive officers, without such a council: without something to
which foreign states might connect themselves,--something to which, in
the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up,--something
which might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something like
consistency in the proceedings of state.
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