Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) was composed of practitioners in the law.  It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their country of their science, prudence, and integrity,—­not of leading advocates, the glory of the bar,—­not of renowned professors in universities,—­but for the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession.  There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation.  From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves.  Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers might have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable,) in that military kingdom no part of the profession had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their professional offices great family splendor, and were invested with great power and authority.  These certainly were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe.  The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.

Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves,—­who had no previous fortune in character at stake,—­who could not be expected to bear with moderation or to conduct with discretion a power which they themselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in their hands.  Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness?  Who could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane?  Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood but too well?  It was not an event depending on chance or contingency.  It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the nature of things.  They must join (if their capacity did not permit them to lead) in any project which could procure to them a litigious constitution,—­which could lay open to