If you would have liberty subsist do not hesitate because of specious arguments which will be presented to you by those who, if they reflect, will recognize the purity of our intentions and the resultant advantages of our plans.  I add to what I have already said that the system will diminish many existing inconveniences, and the proposed law will not have its full effect for two years.  They tell us we are taking from the citizen a right which elevated him by the only means through which he can acquire it.  I reply that if it was an honor the career which you will open for them will imprint them with character greater and more in conformity with true equality.  Our opponents have not failed either to magnify the inconveniences of changing the constitution.  Nor do I desire its change.  For that reason we should not introduce imprudent discussions to create the necessity of a national convention.  In one word, the advice and conclusions of the committee are the sole guarantees for the prosperity and peaceable condition of the nation.

COMMERCIAL POLITICS

Commerce forms a numerous class, friends of external peace and internal tranquillity, who attach themselves to the established government.

It creates great fortunes, which in republics become the origin of the most forceful aristocracies.  As a rule commerce enriches the cities and their inhabitants, and increases the laboring and mechanical classes, in opening more opportunities for the acquirement of riches.  To an extent it fortifies the democratic element in giving the people of the cities greater influence in the government.  It arrives at nearly the same result by impoverishing the peasant and land owner, by the many new pleasures offered him and by displaying to him the ostentation and voluptuousness of luxury and ease.  It tends to create bands of mercenaries rather than those capable of worthy personal service.  It introduces into the nation luxury, ease, and avarice at the same time as labor.

The manners and morals of a commercial people are not the manners of the merchant.  He individually is economical, while the general mass are prodigal.  The individual merchant is conservative and moral, while the general public are rendered dissolute.

The mixture of riches and pleasures which commerce produces joined to freedom of manners, leads to excesses of all kinds, at the same time that the nation may display the perfection of elegance and taste that one noticed in Rome, mistress of the world or in France before the Revolution.  In Rome the wealth was the inflow of the whole world, the product of the hardiest ambition, producing the deterioration of the soldier and the indifference of the patrician.  In France the wealth was the accumulation of an immense commerce and the varied labors of the most industrious nation on the earth diverted by a brilliant and corrupt court, a profligate and chivalrous nobility, and a rich and voluptuous capital.