similar to the
author of "On the Wealth of Nations." he would have comprehended all
the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form a constitution.
He would have reasoned from minutiae to magnitude. It is not from his
prejudices only, but from the disorderly cast of his genius, that he is
unfitted for the subject he writes upon. Even his genius is without a
constitution. It is a genius at random, and not a genius constituted.
But he must say something. He has therefore mounted in the air like a
balloon, to draw the eyes of the multitude from the ground they stand
upon.

Much is to be learned from the French Constitution. Conquest and tyranny
transplanted themselves with William the Conqueror from Normandy into
England, and the country is yet disfigured with the marks. May, then,
the example of all France contribute to regenerate the freedom which a
province of it destroyed!

The French Constitution says that to preserve the national
representation from being corrupt, no member of the National Assembly
shall be an officer of the government, a placeman or a pensioner. What
will Mr. Burke place against this? I will whisper his answer: Loaves and
Fishes. Ah! this government of loaves and fishes has more mischief in
it than people have yet reflected on. The National Assembly has made the
discovery, and it holds out the example to the world. Had governments
agreed to quarrel on purpose to fleece their countries by taxes, they
could not have succeeded better than they have done.

Everything in the English government appears to me the reverse of
what it ought to be, and of what it is said to be. The Parliament,
imperfectly and capriciously elected as it is, is nevertheless supposed
to hold the national purse in trust for the nation; but in the manner in
which an English Parliament is constructed it is like a man being both
mortgagor and mortgagee, and in the case of misapplication of trust it
is the criminal sitting in judgment upon himself. If those who vote the
supplies are the same persons who receive the supplies when voted, and
are to account for the expenditure of those supplies to those who voted
them, it is themselves accountable to themselves, and the Comedy of
Errors concludes with the pantomime of Hush. Neither the Ministerial
party nor the Opposition will touch upon this case. The national purse
is the common hack which each mounts upon. It is like what the country
people call "Ride and tie--you ride a littl