34^ 



Travels in France 



beggared and ruined. Those who will assert a constitution can 

 be good ^ which suffers these things ought at least to agree that 

 such a one as would not suffer them would be much better.- 



If an aristocracy have thus its advantages and disadvantages, 

 it is natural to inquire whether the French nation be likely to 

 establish something of a senate that shall have the advantages 

 without the evils. If there should be none, no popular represen- 

 tatives will ever be brought, with the consent of their consti- 

 tuents, to give up a power in their own possession and enjoyment. 

 It is experience alone, and long experience, that can satisfy 

 the doubts which every one must entertain on this subject. 

 What can we know experimentally of a government which has 

 not stood the brunt of unsuccessful and of successful wars ? The 

 English constitution has stood this test, and has been found de- 

 ficient ; or rather, as far as this test can decide anything, has been 

 proved worthless; since in a single century it has involved the 

 nation in a debt of so vast-' a magnitude that every blessing 

 which might otherwise have been perpetuated is put to the stake; 

 so that if the nation do not make some change in its constitution, 

 it is much to be dreaded that the constitution will ruin the nation. 

 Where practice and experience have so utterly failed it would be 

 vain to reason from theory: and especially on a subject on which 

 a very able writer has seen his own prediction so totally errone- 

 ous: " In the monarchical states of Europe, it is highly improb- 



^ It ought not to be allowed even tolerable for this plain reason: such 

 public extravagance engenders taxes to an amount that will sooner or 

 later force the people into resistance, Vi^hich is always the destruction of a 

 constitution; and surely that must be admitted bad which carries to the 

 most careless eye the seeds of its own destruction. Two hundred and 

 forty millions of public debt in a century is in a ratio impossible to be 

 supported, and therefore evidently ruinous. — Author's note. 



- " The direct power of the King of England," says Mr. Burke, " is con- 

 siderable. His indirect is great indeed. When was it that a King of Eng- 

 land wanted wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even 

 feared in every state in Europe? " It is in such passages as these that 

 this elegant writer lays himself open to the attacks, formidable, because 

 just, of men who have not a hundredth part of his talents. Who ques- 

 tions, or can question, the power of a prince that in less than a century 

 has expended above looo millions and involved his people in a debt of 

 240! The point in debate is not the existence of power but its excess. 

 What is the constitution that generates or allows of such expenses? The 

 very mischief complained of is here wrought into a merit, and brought 

 in argument to prove that poison is salutary. — Author's note. 



' This debt and our enormous taxation are the best answer the National 

 Assembly gives to those who would have had the English government, 

 with all its faults on its head, adopted in France; nor was it without 

 reason said by a popular writer, that a government, formed like the English, 

 obtains more revenue than it could do either by direct despotism or in a full 

 state of freedom. — Autlwr's note. 



