You have settled, by an economy as perverted as the policy, two[125] establishments of government,—­one real, one fictitious:  both maintained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, the greatest.  Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease of its wheels.  The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use deserve the tenth part of the charge.—­Oh! but I don’t do justice to the talents of the legislators:  I don’t allow, as I ought to do, for necessity.  Their scheme of executive force was not their choice.  This pageant must be kept.  The people would not consent to part with it.—­Right:  I understand you.  You do, in spite of your grand theories, to which you would have heaven and earth to bend, you do know how to conform yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things.  But when you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end.  That was in your power.  For instance, among many others, it was in your power to leave to your king the right of peace and war.—­What! to leave to the executive magistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives?—­I know none more dangerous; nor any one more necessary to be so trusted.  I do not say that this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king, unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it, which he does not now hold.  But, if he did possess them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensating the risk.  There is no other way of keeping the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most pernicious of all factions,—­factions in the interest and under the direction of foreign powers.  From that worst of evils, thank God, we are still free.  Your skill, if you had any, would be well employed to find out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous trust.  If you did not like those which in England we have chosen, your leaders might have exerted their abilities in contriving better.  If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the management of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the other proceedings relative to the differences between Great Britain and Spain.  It would be treating your understanding with disrespect to point them out to you.