the king of Great Britain can answer to the exterior or interior purposes of the French monarchy is a point which I cannot venture to judge upon.  Here, both in the power given, and its limitations, we have always cautiously felt our way.  The parts of our Constitution have gradually, and almost insensibly, in a long course of time, accommodated themselves to each other, and to their common as well as to their separate purposes.  But this adaptation of contending parts, as it has not been in ours, so it can never be in yours, or in any country, the effect of a single instantaneous regulation, and no sound heads could ever think of doing it in that manner.

I believe, Sir, that many on the Continent altogether mistake the condition of a king of Great Britain.  He is a real king, and not an executive officer.  If he will not trouble himself with contemptible details, nor wish to degrade himself by becoming a party in little squabbles, I am far from sure that a king of Great Britain, in whatever concerns him as a king, or indeed as a rational man, who combines his public interest with his personal satisfaction, does not possess a more real, solid, extensive power than the king of France was possessed of before this miserable revolution.  The direct power of the king of England is considerable.  His indirect, and far more certain power, is great indeed.  He stands in need of nothing towards dignity,—­of nothing towards splendor,—­of nothing towards authority,—­of nothing at all towards consideration abroad.  When was it that a king of England wanted wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even feared, in every state in Europe?

I am constantly of opinion that your States, in three orders, on the footing on which they stood in 1614, were capable of being brought into a proper and harmonious combination with royal authority.  This constitution by Estates was the natural and only just representation of France.  It grew out of the habitual conditions, relations, and reciprocal claims of men.  It grew out of the circumstances of the country, and out of the state of property.  The wretched scheme of your present masters is not to fit the Constitution to the people, but wholly to destroy conditions, to dissolve relations, to change the state of the nation, and to subvert property, in order to fit their country to their theory of a Constitution.

Until you make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, “a work of labor long, and endless praise,” the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your States.  But at this day all these considerations are unseasonable.  To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power?  Your king is in prison.  Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty?  I doubt much, very much indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard.  Men are qualified