388 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



of a statesman, and after a time returns to make place 

 for another. By this arrangement it is desired to 

 guard against the misuse of the highest power, which 

 a constant body of statesmen might allow themselves 

 to drift into. Every member of a Provincial Assembly 

 as well of the Congress will be careful of approving 

 an ordinance which as a private person he might hesi- 

 tate to obey. He will be loath to impose heavy taxes, 

 which must be a burden to himself as well; and will be 

 slow to make an ill use of the public moneys, because 

 similar action on the part of his successors would be 

 disagreeable to him. 



But also, generally useful institutions will be more 

 slowly advanced if it appears that special interests are 

 to suffer, and there will be a hampering of the best 

 and wisest plans of the Congress. For it may give no 

 decisive sentence, may not arbitrarily order. It can 

 represent only under correction, make proposals and 

 recommendations for the carrying out of which it must 

 have recourse chiefly to influence, cabals, and crooked 

 ways as was said before. And the Congress is very 

 well aware of its increasing infirmity and its diminish- 

 ing dignity ; and does not fail to bring before the 

 people, through hired authors, the necessity of increas- 

 ing its prerogatives and widening its sphere of arbi- 

 trary action, even recommending a Congress to be 

 made up of permanent members. All the newspapers 

 contain articles in which are combated the ineptitude 

 and groundlessness of the jealous suspicion which is 

 almost everywhere entertained regarding the un- 

 quenchable thirst after grandeur of this illustrious 

 Assembly. 



Their place does not give the members of the Con- 



