They are to manage their troops by electioneering arts. They must bear
themselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means power
may be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are to
be nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear: nor is it of much moment,
whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and all
the parts of your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those
parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they are. You seem to
have given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the first
instance, to the king, with a reserve of approbation by the National
Assembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious in
discovering the true seat of power. They must soon perceive that those
who can negative indefinitely 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.
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