The power, however, of the House of Commons,
when least diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean, compared to
that residing in a settled majority of your National Assembly. That
assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law,
no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. Instead of
finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution, they
have a power to make a constitution which shall conform to their
designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on
them. What ought to be the heads, the hearts, the dispositions that
are qualified or that dare, not only to make laws under a fixed
constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new constitution
for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from the monarch on
the throne to the vestry of a parish? But- "fools rush in where angels
fear to tread". In such a state of unbounded power for undefined and
undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical
inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can
conceive to happen in the management of human affairs.
Having considered the composition of the Third Estate as it
stood in its original frame, I took a view of the representatives of
the clergy. There, too, it appeared that full as little regard was had
to the general security of property or to the aptitude of the deputies
for the public purposes, in the principles of their election.
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