[6] Ibid., p. 217.

[7] On one occasion when the Marquis de Bouille pointed out to him the danger of some of his plans as placing the higher class at the mercy of the mob, “dirige par les deux passions les plus actives du coeur humain, l’interet et l’amour propre, ... il me repondit froidement, en levant les yeux au ciel, qu’il fallait bien compter sur les vertus morales des hommes.”—­Memoires de M. de Bouille, p. 70; and Madame de Stael admits of her father that he was “se fiant trop, il faut l’avouer, a l’empire de la raison,” and adds that he “etudia constamment l’esprit public, comme la boussole a laquelle les decisions du roi devaient se conformer.”—­ Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, i., pp. 171, 172.

[8] Her exact words are “si ... il fasse reculer l’autorite du roi” (if he causes the king’s authority to retreat before the populace or the Parliament).

[9] “Histoire de Marie Antoinette,” par M. Montjoye, p. 202.

[10] Madame de Campan, p. 412.

[11] This edict was registered in the “Chambre Syndicate,” September 13th, 1787.—­La Reine Marie Antoinette et la Rev. Francaise, Recherches Historiques, par le Comte de Bel-Castel, p. 246.

[12] There is at the present moment so strong a pretension set up in many constituencies to dictate to the members whom they send to Parliament as if they were delegates, and not representatives, that it is worth while to refer to the opinion which the greatest of philosophical statesman, Edmund Burke, expressed on the subject a hundred years ago, in opposition to that at a rival candidate who admitted and supported the claim of constituents to furnish the member whom they returned to Parliament with “instructions” of “coercive authority.”  He tells the citizens of Bristol plainly that such a claim he ought not to admit, and never will.  The “opinion” of constituents is “a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought most seriously to consider; but authoritative instruction, mandates issued which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and his conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.  Parliament is not a congress of embassadors from different and hostile interests...but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole, where not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good resulting from the general reason of the whole.  You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.”—­General Election Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll at Bristol, November 3d, 1774, Burke’s Works, vol. iii., pp. 19, 20, ed. 1803.