We see a body
without fundamental laws, without established maxims, without
respected rules of proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any
system whatsoever. Their idea of their powers is always taken at the
utmost stretch of legislative competence, and their examples for
common cases from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The
future is to be in most respects like the present Assembly; but, by
the mode of the new elections and the tendency of the new
circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of internal
control existing in a minority chosen originally from various
interests, and preserving something of their spirit. If possible,
the next Assembly must be worse than the present. The present, by
destroying and altering everything, will leave to their successors
apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by emulation and
example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. To suppose
such an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything
at once, have forgotten one thing that seems essential, and which I
believe never has been before, in the theory or the practice,
omitted by any projector of a republic. They have forgotten to
constitute a senate or something of that nature and character. Never
before this time was heard of a body politic composed of one
legislative and active assembly, and its executive officers, without
such a council, without something to which foreign states might
connect themselves; something to which, in the ordinary detail of
government, the people could look up; something which might give a
bias and steadiness and preserve something like consistency in the
proceedings of state.
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