advantageous, but into which men will ever run, when versed in theory
and new in the practice of government, when acquainted with man only
as they see him in their books and not in the world. This plan will
undoubtedly undergo changes in the Assembly, and the longer it is
delayed, the greater will be the changes; for that Assembly, or rather
the patriotic part of it, hooped together heretofore by a common
enemy, are less compact since their victory. That enemy (the civil and
ecclesiastical aristocracy) begins to raise its head. The lees, too, of
the patriotic party, of wicked principles and desperate fortunes,
hoping to pillage something in the wreck of their country, are attaching
themselves to the faction of the Duke of Orleans: that faction is
caballing with the populace, and intriguing at London, the Hague, and
Berlin, and have evidently in view the transfer of the crown to the
Duke of Orleans. He is a man of moderate understanding, of no principle,
absorbed in low vice, and incapable of abstracting himself from the
filth of that, to direct any thing else. His name and his money,
therefore, are mere tools in the hands of those who are duping him.

*****

They may produce a temporary confusion, and even a temporary civil war,
supported, as they will be, by the money of England; but they cannot
have success ultimately. The King, the mass of the substantial people
of the whole country, the army, and the influential part of the clergy,
form a firm phalanx which must prevail. Should those delays which
necessarily attend the deliberations of a body of one thousand two
hundred men, give time to this plot to ripen and burst, so as to break
up the Assembly before any thing definitive is done, a constitution,
the principles of which are pretty well settled in the minds of the
Assembly, will be proposed by the national militia, (*****) urged by the
individual members of the Assembly, signed by the King and supported by
the nation, to prevail till circumstances shall permit its revision and
more regular sanction. This I suppose the _pis aller_ of their affairs,
while their probable event is a peaceable settlement of them. They fear
a war from England, Holland, and Prussia. I think England will give
money, but not make war. Holland would soon be afire, internally, were
she to be embroiled in external difficulties. Prussia must know this,
and act accordingly.

It is impossible to desire better dispositions towards us, than pre