not here as in England, where each of the three branches has a negative on the other two.  If this project of theirs succeeds, a combination between the two Houses of Clergy and Nobles will render the representation of the Tiers Etat merely nugatory.  The bureaux are to assemble together, to consolidate their separate votes:  but I see no reasonable hope of their changing this.  Perhaps the King, knowing that he may count on the support of the nation, and attach it more closely to him, may take on himself to disregard the opinion of the Notables in this instance, and may call an equal representation of the people, in which precedents will support him.  In every event, I think the present disquiet will end well.  The nation has been awaked by our Revolution; they feel their strength, they are enlightened, their lights are spreading, and they will not retrograde.  The first States General may establish three important points, without opposition from the court; 1. their own periodical convocation; 2. their exclusive right of taxation (which has been confessed by the King); 3. the right of registering laws, and of previously proposing amendments to them, as the parliaments have, by usurpation, been in the habit of doing.  The court will consent to this, from its hatred to the parliaments, and from the desire of having to do with one, rather than many legislatures.  If the States are prudent, they will not aim at more than this at first, lest they should shock the dispositions of the court, and even alarm the public mind, which must be left to open itself, by degrees, to successive improvements.  These will follow, from the nature of things:  how far they can proceed, in the end, towards a thorough reformation of abuse, cannot be foreseen.  In my opinion, a kind of influence, which none of their plans of reform take into account, will elude them all; I mean the influence of women in the government.  The manners of the nation allow them to visit, alone, all persons in office, to solicit the affairs of the husband, family, or friends, and their solicitations bid defiance to laws and regulations.  This obstacle may seem less to those, who, like our countrymen, are in the precious habit of considering right, as a barrier against all solicitation.  Nor can such an one, without the evidence of his own eyes, believe in the desperate state to which things are reduced in this country, from the omnipotence of an influence, which, fortunately for the happiness of the sex itself, does not endeavor to extend itself, in our country, beyond the domestic line.

Your communications to the Count de Moustier, whatever they may have been, cannot have done injury to my endeavors here, to open the West Indies to us.  On this head, the ministers are invincibly mute, though I have often tried to draw them into the subject.  I have therefore found it necessary to let it lie, till war, or other circumstances, may force it on.  Whenever they are in war with England, they must open