It would be treating your
understanding with disrespect to point them out to you.
* In reality three, to reckon the provincial republican
establishments.
I hear that the persons who are called ministers have signified an
intention of resigning their places. I am rather astonished that
they have not resigned long since. For the universe I would not have
stood in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the
revolution. Let this fact be as it may, they could not, placed as they
were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be the
first to see collectively, and to feel each in his own department, the
evils which have been produced by that revolution. In every step which
they took, or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country and their utter incapacity of serving it.
They are in a species of subordinate servitude, in which no men before
them were ever seen. Without confidence from their sovereign, on
whom they were forced, or from the Assembly, who forced them upon him,
all the noble functions of their office are executed by committees
of the Assembly without any regard whatsoever to their personal or
their official authority. They are to execute, without power; they are
to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without
choice.
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