who., like other levellers, have taken good care of themselves, Good Dr. Priestley’s friend, good Monsieur Condorcet, has got a place in the treasury of one thousand pounds a year:-ex uno disce omnes!  And thus a set of rascals, who might, with temper and discretion, have obtained a very wholesome Constitution, Witness Poland! have committed infinite mischief, infinite cruelty, infinite injustice, and left a shocking precedent against liberty, unless the Poles are as much admired and imitated as the French ought to be detested.  I do not believe the Emperor will stir yet; he, or his ministers, must see that it is the interest of Germany to let France destroy itself.  His interference yet might unite and consolidate, at least check further confusion and though I rather think that twenty thousand men might march from one end of France to the other, as, though the officers often rallied, French soldiers never were stout; yet, having no officers, no discipline, no subordination, little resistance might be expected.  Yet the enthusiasm that has been spread might turn into courage.  Still it were better for Caesar to wait.  Quarrels amongst themselves will dissipate enthusiasm; and, if they have no foreign enemy, they will soon have spirit enough to turn their swords against one another, and what enthusiasm remains will soon be converted into the inveteracy of faction.  This is speculation, not prophecy; I do not pretend to guess what will happen:  I do think I know what will not; I mean, the system of experiments that they call a constitution cannot last.  Marvellous indeed would it be, if a set of military noble lads, pedantic academicians, curates of villages, and country advocates, could in two years, amidst the utmost confusion and altercation amongst themselves, dictated to or thwarted by obstinate clubs of various factions, have achieved what the wisdom of all ages and all nations has never been able to compose—­a system of government that would set four-and-twenty millions of people free, and contain them within any bounds!  This, too, without one great man amongst them.  If they had had, as Mirabeau seemed to promise to be, but as we know that he was, too, a consummate villain, there would soon have been an end of their vision of liberty.  And so there will be still, unless, after a civil war, they split into small kingdoms or commonwealths.  A little nation may be free; for it can be upon its guard.  Millions cannot be so; because, the greater number of men that are one people, the more vices, the more abuses there are, that will either require or furnish pretexts for restraints; and if vices are the mother of laws, the execution of laws is the father of power:-and of such parents one knows the progeny.

(829) The Constitutional Assembly closed its sittings on the 30th of September; having, during the three years of its existence, enacted thirteen hundred laws and decrees, relative to legislation, or to the general administration of the state.  The first sitting of the, Legislative Assembly took place on the following day.-E.