own hands, not only the fixed, but the momentary circumstances, before I
could venture to suggest any political project whatsoever. I must know
the power and disposition to accept, to execute, to persevere. I must
see all the aids and all the obstacles. I must see the means of
correcting the plan, where correctives would be wanted. I must see the
things; I must see the men. Without a concurrence and adaptation of
these to the design, the very best speculative projects might become not
only useless, but mischievous. Plans must be made for men. We cannot
think of making men, and binding Nature to our designs. People at a
distance must judge ill of men. They do not always answer to their
reputation, when you approach them. Nay, the perspective varies, and
shows them quite otherwise than you thought them. At a distance, if we
judge uncertainly of men, we must judge worse of _opportunities_, which
continually vary their shapes and colors, and pass away like clouds. The
Eastern politicians never do anything without the opinion of the
astrologers on _the fortunate moment_. They are in the right, if they
can do no better; for the opinion of fortune is something towards
commanding it. Statesmen of a more judicious prescience look for the
fortunate moment too; but they seek it, not in the conjunctions and
oppositions of planets, but in the conjunctions and oppositions of men
and things. These form their almanac.

To illustrate the mischief of a wise plan, without any attention to
means and circumstances, it is not necessary to go farther than to your
recent history. In the condition in which France was found three years
ago, what better system could be proposed, what less even savoring of
wild theory, what fitter to provide for all the exigencies whilst it
reformed all the abuses of government, than the convention of the
States-General? I think nothing better could be imagined. But I have
censured, and do still presume to censure, your Parliament of Paris for
not having suggested to the king that this proper measure was of all
measures the most critical and arduous, one in which the utmost
circumspection and the greatest number of precautions were the most
absolutely necessary. The very confession that a government wants either
amendment in its conformation or relief to great distress causes it to
lose half its reputation, and as great a proportion of its strength as
depends upon that reputation. It was therefore necessary first t