circumstances, I see no difficulty in carrying out the idea of Lafayette.  Indeed some such polity is indispensable, unless liberty is to be wholly sacrificed.  All experience has shown that a king, who is a king in fact as well as name, is too strong for law, and the idea of restraining such a power by principles, is purely chimerical.  He may be curtailed in his authority, by the force of opinion, and by extreme constructions of these principles; but if this be desirable, it would be better to avoid the struggle, and begin, at once, by laying the foundation of the system in such a way as will prevent the necessity of any change.

As respects France, a peerage, in my opinion, is neither desirable nor practicable.  It is certainly possible for the king to maintain a chosen political corps, as long as he can maintain himself, which shall act in his interests and do his bidding; but it is folly to ascribe the attributes that belong to a peerage to such a body of mercenaries.  They resemble the famous mandamus counsellors, who had so great an agency in precipitating our own revolution, and are more likely to achieve a similar disservice to their master than any thing else.  Could they become really independent, to a point to render them a masculine feature in the state, they would soon, by their combinations, become too strong for the other branches of the government, as has been the case in England, and France would have a “throne surrounded by aristocratic institutions.”  The popular notion that an aristocracy is necessary to a monarchy, I take it, is a gross error.  A titular aristocracy, in some shape or other, is always the consequence of monarchy, merely because it is the reflection of the sovereign’s favour, policy, or caprice; but political aristocracies like the peerage, have, nine times in ten, proved too strong for the monarch.  France would form no exception to the rule; but, as men are apt to run into the delusion of believing it liberty to strip one of power, although his mantle is to fall on the few, I think it more than probable the popular error would be quite likely to aid the aristocrats in effecting their object, after habit had a little accustomed the nation to the presence of such a body.  This is said, however, under the supposition that the elements of an independent peerage could be found in France, a fact that I doubt, as has just been mentioned..

If England can have a throne, then, surrounded by aristocratical institutions, what is there to prevent France from having a throne “surrounded by republican institutions?” The word “Republic,” though it does not exclude, does not necessarily include the idea of a democracy.  It merely means a polity, in which the predominant idea is the “public things,” or common weal, instead of the hereditary and inalienable rights of one.  It would be quite practicable, therefore, to establish in France such an efficient constituency as would meet the latter