The qualifications which
these confer are in truth negative qualifications, that give a right
in an inverse proportion to the possession of them.
In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any
light you please, I do not see a variety of objects reconciled in
one consistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly
and irreconcilably brought and held together by your philosophers,
like wild beasts shut up in a cage to claw and bite each other to
their mutual destruction.
I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of considering
the formation of a constitution. They have much, but bad, metaphysics;
much, but bad, geometry; much, but false, proportionate arithmetic;
but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry, and arithmetic
ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistent in all
their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision. It
is remarkable that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not one
reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or anything
politic, nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the
passions, the interests of men. Hominem non sapiunt.
You see I only consider this constitution as electoral, and
leading by steps to the National Assembly. I do not enter into the
internal government of the departments and their genealogy through the
communes and cantons.
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