148 JOURNAL. 
These, as the people of the country increased and became enlightened, 
would naturally add to their numbers, and the government would 
grow along with the people. I am too old not to be afraid of ready- 
made constitutions, and especially of one fitted to the habits of a 
highly civilised people applied too suddenly to an infant nation like 
this. Nothing here can be too simple; perhaps, the director and 
senate, or at most, the director with a principal burgess from each 
town, to be changed annually, and representing the council of the 
primitive kings or patriarchs, would for many years suit such a state 
of society better than any more complicated form of legislature. 
To this council should certainly be called the chiefs of the army and 
of the navy. With so limited a population, boards for the regulation 
of different departments of government must be worse than useless. 
Neither the men nor the money can be spared for such purposes, and a 
single accountable chief from each department would answer every end. 
Here, where so few have received an education fit to become 
legislators, the lawyers and the clergy must bear an undue propor- 
tion to the rest. For the maritime town of Valparaiso a priest is 
elected; and the merchants, who will fill up the other places with 
perhaps three or four soldiers, while there is no representative for the 
navy, are men whose views have become contracted by their hitherto 
confined speculations, and from whom, however well-intentioned, it 
would be vain to expect any very enlightened proceedings. 
I am interested in the character of the people, and wish well 
to the good cause of independence. Let the South American 
colonies once secure that, and civil liberty, and all its attendant bless- 
ings, will come in time. 
But I have been writing away the rainy morning, and indulging 
in thoughts too much akin to those of Milton’s conceited inhabit- 
ants of Pandemonium. What have I to do with states or govern- 
ments, who am living in a foreign land by sufferance, and who can 
tell from experience 
‘* How small of all that human hearts endure 
The part that kings or laws can cause or cure !” 
