of the constitution of the year 3 of the French Republic.

A better _organized_ constitution has never yet been devised by human
wisdom. It is, in its organization, free from all the vices and defects
to which other forms of government are more or less subject. I will
speak first of the legislative body, because the Legislature is, in the
natural order of things, the first power; the Executive is the first
magistrate.

By arranging the legislative body into two divisions, as is done in the
French Constitution, the one, (the Council of Five Hundred,) whose part
it is to conceive and propose laws; the other, a Council of Ancients, to
review, approve, or reject the laws proposed; all the security is given
that can arise from coolness of reflection acting upon, or correcting
the precipitancy or enthusiasm of conception and imagination. It is
seldom that our first thought, even upon any subject, is sufficiently
just.(1)

1 For Paine's ideas on the right division of representatives
into two chambers, which differ essentially from any
bicameral system ever adopted, see vol. ii., p. 444 of this
work; also, in the present volume, Chapter XXXIV.--
_Editor._.

The policy of renewing the Legislature by a third part each year, though
not entirely new, either in theory or in practice, is nevertheless one
of the modern improvements in the science of government. It prevents,
on the one hand, that convulsion and precipitate change of measures
into which a nation might be surprised by the going out of the whole
Legislature at the same time, and the instantaneous election of a new
one; on the other hand, it excludes that common interest from taking
place that might tempt a whole Legislature, whose term of duration
expired at once, to usurp the right of continuance. I go now to speak of
the Executive.

It is a principle uncontrovertible by reason, that each of the parts
by which government is composed, should be so constructed as to be in
perpetual maturity. We should laugh at the idea of a Council of Five
Hundred, or a Council of Ancients, or a Parliament, or any national
assembly, who should be all children in leading strings and in the
cradle, or be all sick, insane, deaf, dumb, lame or blind, at the same
time, or be all upon crutches, tottering with age or infirmities. Any
form of government that was so constructed as to admit the possibility
of such cases happening to a whole Legislature would justly be