ent course";--and he soon after says,
"From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as
it has happened, all that was to follow."--Mr. Burke certainly did not
see an that was to follow. I endeavoured to impress him, as well before
as after the States-General met, that there would be a revolution; but
was not able to make him see it, neither would he believe it. How then
he could distinctly see all the parts, when the whole was out of sight,
is beyond my comprehension. And with respect to the "departure from the
ancient course," besides the natural weakness of the remark, it shows
that he is unacquainted with circumstances. The departure was necessary,
from the experience had upon it, that the ancient course was a bad one.
The States-General of 1614 were called at the commencement of the civil
war in the minority of Louis XIII.; but by the class of arranging them
by orders, they increased the confusion they were called to compose. The
author of L'Intrigue du Cabinet, (Intrigue of the Cabinet), who
wrote before any revolution was thought of in France, speaking of the
States-General of 1614, says, "They held the public in suspense five
months; and by the questions agitated therein, and the heat with which
they were put, it appears that the great (les grands) thought more to
satisfy their particular passions, than to procure the goods of the
nation; and the whole time passed away in altercations, ceremonies and
parade."--L'Intrigue du Cabinet, vol. i. p. 329.]

[Footnote 10: There is a single idea, which, if it strikes rightly upon the mind,
either in a legal or a religious sense, will prevent any man or any body
of men, or any government, from going wrong on the subject of religion;
which is, that before any human institutions of government were known in
the world, there existed, if I may so express it, a compact between
God and man, from the beginning of time: and that as the relation and
condition which man in his individual person stands in towards his Maker
cannot be changed by any human laws or human authority, that religious
devotion, which is a part of this compact, cannot so much as be made a
subject of human laws; and that all laws must conform themselves to this
prior existing compact, and not assume to make the compact conform to
the laws, which, besides being human, are subsequent thereto. The first
act of man, when he looked around and saw himself a creature which he
did not make, and a wor