r in which people could
have judged of their separate merits. Why then has he declined the only
thing that was worth while to write upon? It was the strongest ground he
could take, if the advantages were on his side, but the weakest if they
were not; and his declining to take it is either a sign that he could
not possess it or could not maintain it.

Mr. Burke said, in a speech last winter in Parliament, "that when the
National Assembly first met in three Orders (the Tiers Etat, the Clergy,
and the Noblesse), France had then a good constitution." This shows,
among numerous other instances, that Mr. Burke does not understand what
a constitution is. The persons so met were not a constitution, but a
convention, to make a constitution.

The present National Assembly of France is, strictly speaking, the
personal social compact. The members of it are the delegates of
the nation in its original character; future assemblies will be the
delegates of the nation in its organised character. The authority of
the present Assembly is different from what the authority of future
Assemblies will be. The authority of the present one is to form a
constitution; the authority of future assemblies will be to legislate
according to the principles and forms prescribed in that constitution;
and if experience should hereafter show that alterations, amendments,
or additions are necessary, the constitution will point out the mode by
which such things shall be done, and not leave it to the discretionary
power of the future government.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments
arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of
altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself
what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there
is no constitution. The act by which the English Parliament empowered
itself to sit seven years, shows there is no constitution in England. It
might, by the same self-authority, have sat any great number of years,
or for life. The bill which the present Mr. Pitt brought into Parliament
some years ago, to reform Parliament, was on the same erroneous
principle. The right of reform is in the nation in its original
character, and the constitutional method would be by a general
convention elected for the purpose. There is, moreover, a paradox in the
idea of vitiated bodies reforming themselves.

From these preliminaries I proceed to draw some comparis