It is not, that, as this strange series of actions has passed before my eyes, I have not indulged my mind in a great variety of political speculations concerning them; but, compelled by no such positive duty as does not permit me to evade an opinion, called upon by no ruling power, without authority as I am, and without confidence, I should ill answer my own ideas of what would become myself, or what would be serviceable to others, if I were, as a volunteer, to obtrude any project of mine upon a nation to whose circumstances I could not be sure it might be applicable.

Permit me to say, that, if I were as confident as I ought to be diffident in my own loose, general ideas, I never should venture to broach them, if but at twenty leagues’ distance from the centre of your affairs.  I must see with my own eyes, I must, in a manner, touch with my own hands, not only the fixed, but the momentary circumstances, before I could venture to suggest any political project whatsoever.  I must know the power and disposition to accept, to execute, to persevere.  I must see all the aids and all the obstacles.  I must see the means of correcting the plan, where correctives would be wanted.  I must see the things; I must see the men.  Without a concurrence and adaptation of these to the design, the very best speculative projects might become not only useless, but mischievous.  Plans must be made for men.  We cannot think of making men, and binding Nature to our designs.  People at a distance must judge ill of men.  They do not always answer to their reputation, when you approach them.  Nay, the perspective varies, and shows them quite otherwise than you thought them.  At a distance, if we judge uncertainly of men, we must judge worse of opportunities, which continually vary their shapes and colors, and pass away like clouds.  The Eastern politicians never do anything without the opinion of the astrologers on the fortunate moment.  They are in the right, if they can do no better; for the opinion of fortune is something towards commanding it.  Statesmen of a more judicious prescience look for the fortunate moment too; but they seek it, not in the conjunctions and oppositions of planets, but in the conjunctions and oppositions of men and things.  These form their almanac.

To illustrate the mischief of a wise plan, without any attention to means and circumstances, it is not necessary to go farther than to your recent history.  In the condition in which France was found three years ago, what better system could be proposed, what less even savoring of wild theory, what fitter to provide for all the exigencies whilst it reformed all the abuses of government, than the convention of the States-General?  I think nothing better could be imagined.  But I have censured, and do still presume to censure, your Parliament of Paris for not having suggested to the king that this proper measure was of all measures the most critical and arduous, one in which the utmost