single body only, and that to be chosen by the people.  This Concordat decided the fate of the constitution.  The Patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled, carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the aristocracy to insignificance and impotence.  But duties of exculpation were now incumbent on me.  I waited on Count Montmorin the next morning, and explained to him, with truth and candor, how it happened that my house had been made the scene of conferences of such a character.  He told me he already knew every thing which had passed, that so far from taking umbrage at the use made of my house on that occasion, he earnestly wished I would habitually assist at such conferences, being sure I should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and promoting a wholesome and practicable reformation only.  I told him I knew too well the duties I owed to the King, to the nation, and to my own country, to take any part in councils concerning their internal government, and that I should persevere, with care, in the character of a neutral and passive spectator, with wishes only, and very sincere ones, that those measures might prevail which would be for the greatest good of the nation.  I have no doubt, indeed, that this conference was previously known and approved by this honest minister, who was in confidence and communication with the Patriots, and wished for a reasonable reform of the constitution.

Here I discontinue my relation of the French Revolution.  The minuteness with which I have so far given its details, is disproportioned to the general scale of my narrative.  But I have thought it justified by the interest which the whole world must take in this Revolution.  As yet, we are but in the first chapter of its history.  The appeal to the rights of man, which had been made in the United States, was taken up by France, first of the European nations.  From her the spirit has spread over those of the South.  The tyrants of the North have allied indeed against it; but it is irresistible.  Their opposition will only multiply its millions of human victims; their own satellites will catch it, and the condition of man through the civilized world, will be finally and greatly meliorated.  This is a wonderful instance of great events from small causes.  So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.  I have been more minute in relating the early transactions of this regeneration, because I was in circumstances peculiarly favorable for a knowledge of the truth.  Possessing the confidence and intimacy of the leading Patriots, and more than all, of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had no secrets from me, I learned with correctness the views and proceedings of that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic missionaries of Europe at Paris, all of them with the court, and