Was it to be expected that
they would attend to the stability of property, whose existence had
always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable,
ambiguous, and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their
elevation, but their disposition and habits, and mode of accomplishing
their designs, must remain the same.
Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other
descriptions, of more sober and more enlarged understandings. Were
they then to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful dignity
of a handful of country clowns who have seats in that assembly, some
of whom are said not to be able to read and write, and by not a
greater number of traders who, though somewhat more instructed and
more conspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything
beyond their counting house? No! Both these descriptions were more
formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of
lawyers than to become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous
disproportion, the whole must needs be governed by them. To the
faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of the
faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the
law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors,
therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments
of dignity. But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and
as with us they do actually, the sides of sickbeds are not the
academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
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