circumspection and the greatest number of precautions were the most absolutely necessary.  The very confession that a government wants either amendment in its conformation or relief to great distress causes it to lose half its reputation, and as great a proportion of its strength as depends upon that reputation.  It was therefore necessary first to put government out of danger, whilst at its own desire it suffered such an operation as a general reform at the hands of those who were much more filled with a sense of the disease than provided with rational means of a cure.

It may be said that this care and these precautions were more naturally the duty of the king’s ministers than that of the Parliament.  They were so:  but every man must answer in his estimation for the advice he gives, when he puts the conduct of his measure into hands who he does not know will execute his plans according to his ideas.  Three or four ministers were not to be trusted with the being of the French monarchy, of all the orders, and of all the distinctions, and all the property of the kingdom.  What must be the prudence of those who could think, in the then known temper of the people of Paris, of assembling the States at a place situated as Versailles?

The Parliament of Paris did worse than to inspire this blind confidence into the king.  For, as if names were things, they took no notice of (indeed, they rather countenanced) the deviations, which were manifest in the execution, from the true ancient principles of the plan which they recommended.  These deviations (as guardians of the ancient laws, usages, and Constitution of the kingdom) the Parliament of Paris ought not to have suffered, without the strongest remonstrances to the throne.  It ought to have sounded the alarm to the whole nation, as it had often done on things of infinitely less importance.  Under pretence of resuscitating the ancient Constitution, the Parliament saw one of the strongest acts of innovation, and the most leading in its consequences, carried into effect before their eyes,—­and an innovation through the medium of despotism:  that is, they suffered the king’s ministers to new-model the whole representation of the Tiers Etat, and, in a great measure, that of the clergy too, and to destroy the ancient proportions of the orders.  These changes, unquestionably, the king had no right to make; and here the Parliaments failed in their duty, and, along with their country, have perished by this failure.

What a number of faults have led to this multitude of misfortunes, and almost all from this one source,—­that of considering certain general maxims, without attending to circumstances, to times, to places, to conjunctures, and to actors!  If we do not attend scrupulously to all these, the medicine of to-day becomes the poison of to-morrow.  If any measure was in the abstract better than another, it was to call the States:  ea visa salus morientibus una.  Certainly it had the appearance.  But see the consequences of not attending to critical moments, of not regarding the symptoms which discriminate diseases, and which distinguish constitutions, complexions, and humors.