does not possess a more
real, solid, extensive power than the king of France was possessed of
before this miserable revolution. The direct power of the king of
England is considerable. His indirect, and far more certain power, is
great indeed. He stands in need of nothing towards dignity,--of nothing
towards splendor,--of nothing towards authority,--of nothing at all
towards consideration abroad. When was it that a king of England wanted
wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even feared, in
every state in Europe?

I am constantly of opinion that your States, in three orders, on the
footing on which they stood in 1614, were capable of being brought into
a proper and harmonious combination with royal authority. This
constitution by Estates was the natural and only just representation of
France. It grew out of the habitual conditions, relations, and
reciprocal claims of men. It grew out of the circumstances of the
country, and out of the state of property. The wretched scheme of your
present masters is not to fit the Constitution to the people, but wholly
to destroy conditions, to dissolve relations, to change the state of the
nation, and to subvert property, in order to fit their country to their
theory of a Constitution.

Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of
opposing forces, "a work of labor long, and endless praise," the utmost
caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power,
which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively
heterogeneous mass of your States. But at this day all these
considerations are unseasonable. To what end should we discuss the
limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the
measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether
France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for
civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral
chains upon their own appetites,--in proportion as their love to justice
is above their rapacity,--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety
of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,--in proportion
as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and
good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist,
unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere;
and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It
is ordained in the etern