I hear that the persons who are called ministers have signified an intention of resigning their places.  I am rather astonished that they have not resigned long since.  For the universe I would not have stood in the situation in which they have been for this last twelvemonth.  They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution.  Let this fact be as it may, they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be the first to see collectively, and to feel each in his own department, the evils which have been produced by that Revolution.  In every step which they took, or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded situation of their country, and their utter incapacity of serving it.  They are in a species of subordinate servitude in which no men before them were ever seen.  Without confidence from their sovereign on whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who forced them upon him, all the noble functions of their office are executed by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their personal or their official authority.  They are to execute, without power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice.  In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither of whom they have any influence, they must act in such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the other, and always to betray themselves.  Such has been their situation; such must be the situation of those who succeed them.  I have much respect, and many good wishes, for M. Necker.  I am obliged to him for attentions.  I thought, when his enemies had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was a subject of most serious congratulation. Sed multae urbes et publica vota vicerunt.  He is now sitting on the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of France.

A great deal more might be observed on the strange constitution of the executory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.

As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly.  According to their invariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parliaments.  These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old government, stood in need of reform, even though there should be no change made in the monarchy.  They required several more alterations to adapt them to the system of a free Constitution.  But they had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, which deserved approbation from the wise.  They possessed one fundamental excellence:  they were independent.  The most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character.  They held for life.  Indeed, they may be said