ncy; for certain
it is, that the plan of the Constitution which has been presented to you
is not consistent with the grand object of the Revolution, nor congenial
to the sentiments of the individuals who accomplished it.

To deprive half the people in a nation of their rights as citizens,
is an easy matter in theory or on paper: but it is a most dangerous
experiment, and rarely practicable in the execution.

I shall now proceed to the observations I have to offer on this
important subject; and I pledge myself that they shall be neither
numerous nor diffusive.

In my apprehension, a constitution embraces two distinct parts or
objects, the _Principle_ and the _Practice_; and it is not only an
essential but an indispensable provision that the practice should
emanate from, and accord with, the principle. Now I maintain, that the
reverse of this proposition is the case in the plan of the Constitution
under discussion. The first article, for instance, of the _political
state_ of citizens, (v. Title ii. of the Constitution,) says:

"Every man born and resident in France, who, being twenty-one years of
age, has inscribed his name on the Civic Register of his Canton, and who
has lived afterwards one year on the territory of the Republic, and who
pays any direct contribution whatever, real or personal, is a French
citizen." (1)

1 The article as ultimately adopted substituted "person" for
"man," and for "has inscribed his name" (a slight
educational test) inserted "whose name is inscribed."--
_Editor._

I might here ask, if those only who come under the above description are
to be considered as citizens, what designation do you mean to give the
rest of the people? I allude to that portion of the people on whom the
principal part of the labour falls, and on whom the weight of indirect
taxation will in the event chiefly press. In the structure of the social
fabric, this class of people are infinitely superior to that privileged
order whose only qualification is their wealth or territorial
possessions. For what is trade without merchants? What is land without
cultivation? And what is the produce of the land without manufactures?
But to return to the subject.

In the first place, this article is incompatible with the three first
articles of the Declaration of Rights, which precede the Constitutional
Act.

The first article of the Declaration of Rights says:

"The end of society is the public good; and