should be there, expressly to speak the sentiments, and defend the interests, of the executive. Every popular assembly must be grossly imperfect, that is not composed of such heterogeneous materials as these. Our own parliament may perhaps contain within itself too many of that species of representatives, who could never have arrived at the dignity under a pure and perfect system of election; but, for all the practical purposes of government, amidst a great majority fairly elected by the people, we should always wish to see a certain number of the legislative body representing interests very distinct from those of the people.

The legislative part of his constitution M. Necker manages in the following manner. There are two councils, the great and the little. The great council is composed of five members from each department, elected in the manner we have just described, and amounting to the number of six hundred. The assembly is re-elected every five years. No qualification* of property is necessary to its members, who receive each a salary of 12,000 livres. No one is eligible to the assembly before the age of twenty-five years. The little national council consists of one hundred members, or from that number to one hundred and twenty; one for each department. It is re-elected every ten years; its members must be thirty years of age; and they receive the same salary as the members of the great council. For the election of the little council, each of the five Chambers of Indication, in every department, gives in the name of one candidate; and, from the five so named, the same voters who choose the great council select one.

The municipal officers enjoy, in this election, the same right of recommending one of the candidates to the people; a privilege which they would certainly exercise indirectly, without a law, wherever they could exercise it with any effect, and the influence of which the sanction of the law would at all times rather diminish than increase.

Nothing can be more absurd than our qualification for parliament; it is nothing but a foolish and expensive lie on parchment.

The grand national council commences all deliberations which concern public order, and the interest of the state, with the exception of those only which belong to finance. Nevertheless, the executive and the little council have it in their power to propose any law for the consideration of the grand council. When a law has passed the two councils, and received the sanction of the executive senate, it becomes binding upon the people. If the executive senate disapprove of any law presented to them for their adoption, they are to send it back to the two councils for their reconsideration; but if it pass these two bodies again, with the approbation of two thirds of the members of each assembly, the executive has no longer the power of withholding its assent. All measures of finance are to initiate with government.

We believe M. Necker to be right in his idea of not exacting any qualification of property in his legislative assemblies. When men are left to choose their own governors, they are guided in their choice by some one of those motives which has always commanded their homage and admiration:- if they do not choose wealth, they choose birth or talents, or military fame: and of all these species of pre-eminence, a large popular assembly should be constituted. In England, the laws, requiring that members of parliament should be possessed of certain property, are (except in the instance of members for counties) practically repealed.

In the salaries of the members of the two councils, with the exception of the expense, there is, perhaps, no great balance of good or harm. To some men it would be an inducement to become senators; to others, induced by more honourable motives, it would afford the means of supporting that situation without disgrace. Twenty-five years of age is certainly too late a period for the members of the great council. Of what astonishing displays of eloquence and talent should we have been deprived in this country under the adoption of a similar rule!

The institution of two assemblies constitutes a check upon the passion and preci

pitation by which the resolutions of any single popular assembly may occasionally be governed. The chances, that one will correct the other, do not depend solely upon their dividuality, but upon the different ingredients of which they are composed, and that difference of system and spirit, which results from a difference of conformation. Perhaps M. Necker has not sufficiently attended to this consideration. The difference between his two assemblies is not very material; and the same popular fury which marked the proceedings of the one, would not be very sure of meeting with an adequate corrective in the dignified coolness and wholesome gravity of the other.

All power which is tacitly allowed to devolve upon the executive part of a government, from the experience that it is most conveniently placed there, is both safer, and less likely to be complained of, than that which is conferred upon it by law. If M. Necker had placed some agents of the executive in the great council, all measures of finance would, in fact, have originated in them, without any exclusive right to such initiation; but the right of initiation, from M. Necker's contrivance, is likely to excite that discontent in the people, which alone can render it dangerous and objectionable.

In this plan of a republic, every thing seems to depend upon the purity and the moderation of its governors. The executive has no connexion. with the great council; the members of the great council have no motive of hope, or interest, to consult the wishes of the executive. The assembly, which is to give example to the nation, and enjoy its confidence, is composed of six hundred men, whose passions have no other control than that pure love of the public, which it is hoped they may possess, and that cool investigation of interests, which it is hoped they may pursue.

Of the effects of such a constitution, every thing must be conjectured; for experience enables us to make no assertion respecting it. There is only one government in the modern world, which, from the effects it has produced, and the time it has endured, can

with justice be called good and free. Its constitution, in books, contains the description of a legislative assembly, similar to that of M. Necker's. Happily, perhaps, for the people, the share they have really enjoyed in its election, is much less ample than that allotted to them in this republic of the closet. How long a really popular assembly would tolerate any rival and co-existing power in the state-for what period the feeble executive, and the untitled, unblazoned peers of a republic, could stand against it whether any institutions compatible with the essence and meaning of a republic, could prevent it from absorbing all the dignity, the popularity, and the power of the state,

are questions that we leave for the resolution of wiser heads; with the sincerest joy, that we have only a theoretical interest in stating them.*

The executive senate is to consist of seven; and the right of presenting the candidates, and selecting from the candidates alternately from one assembly to the other, i. e. on a vacancy, the great council present three candidates to the little council, who select one from that number; and, on the next vacancy, by the inversion of this process, the little council present, and the great council select; and so alternately. The members of the executive must be thirty-five years of age. Their measures are determined by a majority. The president, called the Consul, has a casting vote; his salary is fixed at 300,000 livres; that of all the other senators at 60,000 livres. The office of consul is annual. Every senator enjoys it in his turn. Every year one senator goes out, unless re-elected; which he may be once, and even twice, if he unite three fourths of the votes of each council in his favour. The executive shall name to all civil and military offices, except to those of mayors and municipalities. Political negotiations, and connexions with foreign countries, fall under the direction of the executive. Declarations of war or peace, when presented by the exe

* That interest is at present not quite so theoretical as it was.

cutive to the legislative body, are to be adopted, the first by a majority of three fifths, the last by a simple majority. The parade, honours, and ceremonies of the executive, devolve upon the consul alone. The members of the senate, upon going out of office, become members of the little council, to the number of seven. Upon the vacation of an eighth senator, the oldest ex-senator in the little council resigns his seat to make room for him. All responsibility rests upon the consul alone, who has a right to stop the proceedings of a majority of the executive senate, by declaring them unconstitutional; and if the majority persevere, in spite of this declaration, the dispute is referred to and decided by a secret committee of the little council.

M. Necker takes along with him the same mistake through the whole of his constitution, by conferring the choice of candidates on one body, and the election of the member on another: so that though the alternation would take place between the two councils, it would turn out to be in an order directly opposite to that which was intended. We perfectly acquiesce in the reasons M. Necker has alleged for the preference given to an executive, constituted of many individuals, rather than of one. The prize of supreme power is too tempting to admit of fair play in the game of ambition; and it is wise to lessen its value by dividing it: at least it is wise to do so, under a form of government that cannot admit the better expedient of rendering the executive hereditary; an expedient (gross and absurd as it seems to be) the best calculated, perhaps, to obviate the effects of ambition upon the stability of governments, by narrowing the field on which it acts, and the object for which it contends. The Americans have determined otherwise, and adopted an elective presidency: but there are innumerable circumstances, as M. Necker very justly observes, which render the example of America inapplicable to other governments. America is a federative republic, and the extensive jurisdiction of the individual States exonerates the President from so great a

portion of the cares of domestic government, that he may almost be considered as a mere minister of foreign affairs. America presents such an immediate, and such a seducing species of provision to all its inhabitants, that it has no idle discontented populace; its population amounts only to six millions, and it is not condensed in such masses as the population of Europe. After all, an experiment of twenty years is never to be cited in politics; nothing can be built upon such a slender inference. Even if America were to remain stationary, she might find that she had presented too fascinating and irresistible an object to human ambition: of course, that peril is increased by every augmentation of a people, who are hastening on, with rapid and irresistible pace, to the highest eminences of human grandeur. Some contest for power there must be in every free state: but the contest for vicarial and deputed power, as it implies the presence of a moderator and a master, is more prudent than the struggle for that which is original and supreme.

The difficulty of reconciling the responsi bility of the executive with its dignity, M. Necker foresees; and states, but does not remedy. An irresponsible executive, the jealousy of a republic would never tolerate; and its amenability to punishment, by degrading it in the eyes of the people, diminishes its power.

All the leading features of civil liberty are copied from the constitution of this country, with hardly any variation.

Having thus finished his project of a republic, M. Necker proposes the government of this country as the best model of a temperate and hereditary monarchy; pointing out such alterations in it as the genius of the French people, the particular circumstances in which they are placed, or the abuses which have crept into our policy, may require. From one or the other of these motives he re-establishes the salique law*;

A most sensible and valuable law, banishing gallantry and chivalry from Cabinets, and preventing the amiable antics of grave statesmen.

We are surprised that M. Necker should attempt to build any strong argument upon the durability of opinions in nations that are about to undergo, or that have recently undergone, great political changes. What opinion was there in favour of a republic in 1780? Or against it in 1794? Or, what opinion is there now in favour of it in 1802? Is not the tide of opinions, at this moment, in France, setting back with a strength equal to its flow? and is there not reason to presume, that, for some time to come, their ancient institutions may be adored with as much fury as they were destroyed? If opinion can revive in favour of kings (and M. Necker allows it may), why not in favour of nobles? It is true their property is in the hands of other persons; and the whole of that species of proprietors will exert themselves to the utmost to prevent a restoration so pernicious to their interests. The obstacle is certainly of a very formidable nature. But why this weight of property, so weak a weapon of defence to its ancient, should be deemed so irresistible in the hands of its present, possessors, we are at a loss to conceive; unless, indeed, it be supposed, that antiquity of possession diminishes the sense of right and the vigour of retention; and that men will struggle harder to keep what they have acquired only yesterday, than that which they have possessed, by themselves or their ancestors, for six centuries.

In France, the inferiority of the price of revolutionary lands, to others, is immense. Of the former species, church land is considerably dearer than the forfeited estates of emigrants. Whence the difference of price, but from the estimated difference of security? Can any fact display, more strongly, the state of public opinion with regard to the probability of a future restoration of these estates, either partial or total? and can any circumstance facilitate the execution of such a project, more than the general belief that it will be executed? M. Necker allows, that the impediments to the formation of a republic are very serious; but thinks they would all yield to the talents and activity of Bonaparte, if he were to dedicate himself to

the superintendence of such a government during the period of its infancy: of course, therefore, he is to suppose the same power dedicated to the formation of an hereditary monarchy: or his parallel of difficulties is unjust, and his preference irrational. Bonaparte could represent the person of a monarch, during his life, as well as he could represent the executive of a republic; and if he could overcome the turbulence of elec tors, to whom freedom was new, he could appease the jealousy that his generals would entertain of the returning nobles. Indeed, without such powerful intervention, this latter objection does not appear to us to be by any means insuperable. If the history of our own restoration were to be acted over again in France, and royalty and aristocracy brought back by the military successor of Bonaparte, it certainly could not be done without a very liberal distribution of favours among the great leaders of the army.

Jealousy of the executive is one feature of a republic; in consequence, that government is clogged with a multiplicity of safeguards and restrictions, which render it unfit for investigating complicated details, and managing extensive relations with vigour, consistency, and despatch. A republic, therefore, is better fitted for a little stage than a large one.

A love of equality is another very strong principle in a republic: therefore it does not tolerate hereditary honour or wealth; and all the effect produced upon the minds of the people by this factitious power is lost, and the government weakened: but, in proportion as the government is less able to command, the people should be more willing to obey; therefore a republic is better suited to a moral than an immoral people.

A people who have recently experienced great evils from the privileged orders and from monarchs, love republican forms so much, that the warmth of their inclination supplies, in some degree, the defect of their institutions. Immediately, therefore, upon the destruction of despotism, a republic may be preferable to a limited monarchy.

And yet, though narrowness of territory,