this position,--that a delegate
with limited powers may break his sworn engagements to his constituent,
assume an authority, never committed to him, to alter all things at his
pleasure, and then, if he can persuade a large number of men to flatter
him in the power he has usurped, that he is absolved in his own
conscience, and ought to stand acquitted in the eyes of mankind? On this
scheme, the maker of the experiment must begin with a determined
perjury. That point is certain. He must take his chance for the
expiatory addresses. This is to make the success of villany the
standard of innocence.

Without drawing on, therefore, very shocking consequences, neither by
previous consent, nor by subsequent ratification of a _mere reckoned
majority_, can any set of men attempt to dissolve the state at their
pleasure. To apply this to our present subject. When the several orders,
in their several bailliages, had met in the year 1789, (such of them, I
mean, as had met peaceably and constitutionally,) to choose and to
instruct their representatives, so organized and so acting, (because
they were organized and were acting according to the conventions which
made them a people,) they were the _people_ of France. They had a legal
and a natural capacity to be considered as that people. But observe,
whilst they were in this state, that is, whilst they were a people, in
no one of their instructions did they charge or even hint at any of
those things which have drawn upon the usurping Assembly and their
adherents the detestation of the rational and thinking part of mankind.
I will venture to affirm, without the least apprehension of being
contradicted by any person who knows the then state of France, that, if
any one of the changes were proposed, which form the fundamental parts
of their Revolution, and compose its most distinguishing acts, it would
not have had one vote in twenty thousand in any order. Their
instructions purported the direct contrary to all those famous
proceedings which are defended as the acts of the people. Had such
proceedings been expected, the great probability is, that the people
would then have risen, as to a man, to prevent them. The whole
organization of the Assembly was altered, the whole frame of the
kingdom was changed, before these things could be done. It is long to
tell, by what evil arts of the conspirators, and by what extreme
weakness and want of steadiness in the lawful government, this equal
usurpati