[Sidenote:  Power separated from property.]

Whoever will take an accurate view of the state of those republics, and of the composition of the present Assembly deputed by them, (in which Assembly there are not quite fifty persons possessed of an income amounting to 100_l._ sterling yearly,) must discern clearly, that the political and civil power of France is wholly separated from its property of every description, and of course that neither the landed nor the moneyed interest possesses the smallest weight or consideration in the direction of any public concern.  The whole kingdom is directed by the refuse of its chicane, with the aid of the bustling, presumptuous young clerks of counting-houses and shops, and some intermixture of young gentlemen of the same character in the several towns.  The rich peasants are bribed with Church lands; and the poorer of that description are, and can be, counted for nothing.  They may rise in ferocious, ill-directed tumults,—­but they can only disgrace themselves and signalize the triumph of their adversaries.

[Sidenote:  Effects of the rota.]

The truly active citizens, that is, the above descriptions, are all concerned in intrigue respecting the various objects in their local or their general government.  The rota, which the French have established for their National Assembly, holds out the highest objects of ambition to such vast multitudes as in an unexampled measure to widen the bottom of a new species of interest merely political, and wholly unconnected with birth or property.  This scheme of a rota, though it enfeebles the state, considered as one solid body, and indeed wholly disables it from acting as such, gives a great, an equal, and a diffusive strength to the democratic scheme.  Seven hundred and fifty people, every two years raised to the supreme power, has already produced at least fifteen hundred bold, acting politicians:  a great number for even so great a country as France.  These men never will quietly settle in ordinary occupations, nor submit to any scheme which must reduce them to an entirely private condition, or to the exercise of a steady, peaceful, but obscure and unimportant industry.  Whilst they sit in the Assembly, they are denied offices of trust and profit,—­but their short duration makes this no restraint:  during their probation and apprenticeship they are all salaried with an income to the greatest part of them immense; and after they have passed the novitiate, those who take any sort of lead are placed in very lucrative offices, according to their influence and credit, or appoint those who divide their profits with them.