In conversing with an intelligent Vaudois on returning from the church, I found that a great deal of interest is excited in this Canton by the late conspiracy in Berne.  The Vaudois have got that attachment to liberty which is ever the result of a long political dependence, and which so naturally disposes the inferior to resist the superior.  It is not pretended, however, that the domination of Berne was particularly oppressive, though as a matter of course, whenever the interests of Vaud happened to conflict with those of the great canton, the former had to succumb.  Still the reaction of a political dependency, which lasted more than two centuries and a half, had brought about, even previously to the late changes, a much more popular form of government than was usual in Switzerland, and the people here really manifest some concern on the subject of this effort of aristocracy.  As you may like to compare the elective qualifications of one of the more liberal cantons of the confederation with some of our own, I will give you an outline of those of Vaud, copied, in the substance, from Picot.

The voter must have had a legal domicile in the canton one year, be a citizen, twenty-five years old, and be of the number of the three-fourths of the citizens who pay the highest land-tax, or have three sons enrolled and serving in the militia.  Domestics, persons receiving succour from the parishes, bankrupts, outlaws, and convicted criminals, are perpetually excluded from the elective franchise.

This system, though far better than that of France, which establishes a certain amount of direct taxation, is radically vicious, as it makes property, and that of a particular species, the test of power.  It is, in truth, the old English plan a little modified; and the recent revolution that has lately taken place in England under the name of reform, goes to prove that it is a system which contains in itself the seeds of vital changes.  As every political question is strictly one of practice, changes become necessary everywhere with the changes of circumstances, and these are truly reforms; but when they become so serious as to overturn principles, they produce the effects of revolutions, though possibly in a mitigated form.  Every system, therefore, should be so framed as to allow of all the alterations which are necessary to convenience, with a strict regard to its own permanency as connected with its own governing principle.  In America, in consequence of having attended to this necessity from the commencement, we have undergone no revolution in principle in half a century, though constantly admitting of minor changes, while nearly all Europe has, either in theory or in practice, or in both, been effectually revolutionized.  Nor does the short period from which our independent existence dates furnish any argument against us, as it is not so much time, as the changes of which time is the parent, that tries political systems; and