The gradation proceeds.  These primary assemblies of the Canton elect deputies to the Commune,—­one for every two hundred qualified inhabitants.  Here is the first medium put between the primary elector and the representative legislator; and here a new turnpike is fixed for taxing the rights of men with a second qualification:  for none can be elected into the Commune who does not pay the amount of ten days’ labor.  Nor have we yet done.  There is still to be another gradation.[121] These Communes, chosen by the Canton, choose to the Department; and the deputies of the Department choose their deputies to the National Assembly.  Here is a third barrier of a senseless qualification.  Every deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct contribution, to the value of a mark of silver.  Of all these qualifying barriers we must think alike:  that they are impotent to secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men.

In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to consider only population, upon a principle of natural right, there is a manifest attention to property,—­which, however just and reasonable on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.

When they come to their third basis, that of Contribution, we find that they have more completely lost sight of the rights of men.  This last basis rests entirely on property.  A principle totally different from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted:  but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature.  The additional share in the third portion of representation (a portion reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the district only, and not the individuals in it who pay.  It is easy to perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they were embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and the privileges of riches.  The Committee of Constitution do as good as admit that they are wholly irreconcilable.  “The relation with regard to the contributions is without doubt null, (say they,) when the question is on the balance of the political rights as between individual and individual; without which personal equality would be destroyed, and an aristocracy of the rich would be established.  But this inconvenience entirely disappears, when the proportional relation of the contribution is only considered in the great masses, and is solely between province and province; it serves in that case only to form a just reciprocal proportion between the cities, without affecting the personal rights of the citizens.”