government) to our House of Commons.  That House is, within itself, a much more subtle and artificial combination of parts and powers than people are generally aware of.  What knits it to the other members of the Constitution, what fits it to be at once the great support and the great control of government, what makes it of such admirable service to that monarchy which, if it limits, it secures and strengthens, would require a long discourse, belonging to the leisure of a contemplative man, not to one whose duty it is to join in communicating practically to the people the blessings of such a Constitution.

Your Tiers Etat was not in effect and substance an House of Commons.  You stood in absolute need of something else to supply the manifest defects in such a body as your Tiers Etat.  On a sober and dispassionate view of your old Constitution, as connected with all the present circumstances, I was fully persuaded that the crown, standing as things have stood, (and are likely to stand, if you are to have any monarchy at all,) was and is incapable, alone and by itself, of holding a just balance between the two orders, and at the same time of effecting the interior and exterior purposes of a protecting government.  I, whose leading principle it is, in a reformation of the state, to make use of existing materials, am of opinion that the representation of the clergy, as a separate order, was an institution which touched all the orders more nearly than any of them touched the other; that it was well fitted to connect them, and to hold a place in any wise monarchical commonwealth.  If I refer you to your original Constitution, and think it, as I do, substantially a good one, I do not amuse you in this, more than in other things, with any inventions of mine.  A certain intemperance of intellect is the disease of the time, and the source of all its other diseases.  I will keep myself as untainted by it as I can.  Your architects build without a foundation.  I would readily lend an helping hand to any superstructure, when once this is effectually secured,—­but first I would say, [Greek:  Dos pou sto].

You think, Sir, (and you might think rightly, upon the first view of the theory,) that to provide for the exigencies of an empire so situated and so related as that of France, its king ought to be invested with powers very much superior to those which the king of England possesses under the letter of our Constitution.  Every degree of power necessary to the state, and not destructive to the rational and moral freedom of individuals, to that personal liberty and personal security which contribute so much to the vigor, the prosperity, the happiness, and the dignity of a nation,—­every degree of power which does not suppose the total absence of all control and all responsibility on the part of ministers,—­a king of France, in common sense, ought to possess.  But whether the exact measure of authority assigned by the letter of the law to