I told General Lafayette, that, in my poor judgment, the question admitted of a good deal of controversy.  Names did not signify much, but every administration should receive its main impulses, subject to the common wishes and interests, from a close conformity of views, whether there were one incumbent or a dozen.  The English system certainly made a near approach to a divided executive, but the power was so distributed as to prevent much clashing; and when things went wrong, the ministers resigned; parliament, in effect, holding the control of the executive as well as of the legislative branches of the government.  Now I did not think France was prepared for such a polity, the French being accustomed to see a real as well as a nominal monarch, and the disposition to intrigue would, for a long time to come, render their administrations fluctuating and insecure.  A directory would either control the chambers, or be controlled by them.  In the former case it would be apt to be divided in itself; in the latter, to agitate the chambers by factions that would not have the ordinary outlet of majorities to restore the equilibrium.

He was of opinion himself that the expedient of a directory had not suited the state of France.  He asked me what I thought of universal suffrage for this country.  I told him, I thought it altogether unsuited to the present condition of France.  I did not attach much faith to the old theory of the necessary connexion between virtue and democracy, as a cause; though it might, with the necessary limitations, follow as an effect.  A certain degree of knowledge of its uses, action, and objects, was indispensable to a due exercise of the suffrage; not that it was required every elector should be learned in the theory of governments, but that he should know enough to understand the general connexion between his vote and his interests, and especially his rights.  This knowledge was not at all difficult of attainment, in ordinary cases, when one had the means of coming at facts.  In cases that admit of argument, as in all the questions on political economy, I did not see that any reasonable degree of knowledge made the matter much better, the cleverest men usually ranging themselves on the two extremes of all mooted questions.  Concerning the right of every man, who was qualified to use the power, to have his interests directly represented in a government, it was unnecessary to speak, the only question being who had and who had not the means to make a safe use of the right in practice.  It followed from these views, that the great desiderata were to ascertain what these means were.

In the present state of the world, I thought it absolutely necessary that a man should be able to read, in order to exercise the right to vote with a prudent discretion.  In countries where everybody reads, other qualifications might be trusted to, provided they were low and within reasonable reach of the mass; but, in a country like France, I would allow no man to vote until he knew how to read, if he were as rich as Croesus.