These certainly were highly respected,
and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much
esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it
must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in
the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves, who
had no previous fortune in character at stake, who could not be
expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with discretion, a
power which they themselves, more than any others, must be surprised
to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself that these men,
suddenly and, as it were, by enchantment snatched from the humblest
rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their
unprepared greatness? Who could conceive that men who are habitually
meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and
unquiet minds would easily fall back into their old condition of
obscure contention and laborious, low, unprofitable chicane? Who could
doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they
understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which
they understand but too well? It was not an event depending on
chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was
planted in the nature of things. They must join (if their capacity did
not permit them to lead) in any project which could procure to them
a litigious constitution; which could lay open to them those
innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of all great
convulsions and revolutions in the state, and particularly in all
great and violent permutations of property.
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