the acquisition of each year? Will you likewise rely, for those provisional improvements which may be adapted to circumstances, on ministers who will imagine that they have done all, when they shall have said: The king is acquainted with the whole business, for I have apprized him of the whole business, and I have only executed his positive orders, which I myself told him to give me?

Perhaps, to remove to a greater distance the return of National Assemblies, they will propose to you an intermediate commission. But this intermediate commission will either do what the National Assembly would have done, and, in that case, I do not see why the latter should not be re-assembled; or it will not be able to do what the Assembly would have done, and, in that case, will not prove a succedaneum. Do you not perceive also, that this commission would become the body from which the ministry would be recruited, and that, in order to attain promotion, the members would insensibly become the docile instruments of court intrigue?

It hath been insisted, that the want of publick spirit is an obstacle to the annual return of the National Assembly. But how are you to form that publick spirit better, than by approximating the periods at which each citizen will be called upon to give proofs of it? Was it possible for that publick spirit to exist, when the fatal division of the orders was absorbing every thing which it did not degrade; when all the citizens, high and low, had no other resources against humiliations and contempt, and no other compensation for their political insignificance,* than the theatre, the chase, intrigue, cabal, gaming, every vice under the cope of heaven?

The immense expense attending an election and an annual National Assembly, hath been urged as an objection against them!

The whole is calculated; three millions form the groundwork of this grand objection. And what are

* Leur nullité

three millions to a nation that pays six hundred, and which would not have three hundred and fifty to pay, if for these thirty years past she had had an annual National Assembly?

It hath even been said to me: Who will wish to become a member of the National Assembly, if it is to have annual sessions?-And to these extraordinary words I answer: Not you, who ask the question-but every worthy member of the clergy, who shall be willing and able to prove to the unfortunate, how useful is the clergy-every worthy member of the nobility, who shall be willing and able to prove to the nation, that the nobles likewise can serve it in more ways than one-every member of the commons, who may wish to say to every nobleman, proud of his title, How often have you sate amongst the legislators?

In fine, the English, who have done every thing, yet assemble every year, and always find something to do-and the French, who have every thing to do, are not to assemble every year !—

We shall have, then, a permanent assembly; and this sublime institution will, in itself alone, become a sufficient counterpoise to the royal veto.

What! say those who take alarm at a great power, because they judge of it only by its abuses, the royal veto to be unlimited! Should there not be a moment determined by the constitution, when this veto could no longer shackle the legislative power? Would not that government be a despotism, where the king could say: This is the will of my people; but mine is contrary to it, and it is mine that shall prevail.

They who are troubled with this apprehension, propose what they term a veto suspensive: that is to say, that the king shall have the power of refusing his sanction to a legislative project which he disapproves; he shall have the power of dissolving the National Assembly, or of waiting for a new one; but, if that new assembly re-propose to him the same law which he hath already rejected, he shall be obliged

to receive it.

Herein consists the whole force of their argumentation. When the king refuses to sanction the law which the National Assembly hath proposed to him, it is to be supposed that he deems that law to be contrary to the interests of the people, or that it encroaches on the executive power, which resides in him, and which it is his duty to defend: in this case, he appeals to the nation, the nation elects a new legis. lature, intrusts its wishes to its new representatives, consequently it declares its will; the king then must either submit, or deny the authority of that supreme tribunal, to which he himself had ap pealed.

This objection is very specious, and if I am able to perceive the falsity of it, it is only from having examined the question under all its aspects; but we have already had an opportunity of seeing, and it will become still more observable in the course of the debate, that:

1. It supposes falsely that it is impossible that a second legislature should not convey the wishes of the people,

2. It supposes falsely that the king will be tempted to prolong his veto, in opposition to the known wish of the nation,

3. It supposes that the veto suspensive is attended with no inconveniences; whereas, in many respects, it hath the same inconveniences as if the king were allowed no veto.*

*This arrangement is certainly not what should be expect ed in a well-digested speech. But when, in consequence of a very defective mode of discussion, they have, among us, ren. dered it physically impossible to debate, and laid each author of an opinion under the necessity of waiting three days, in order to refute objections which are sometimes forgotten by those who made them (lucky if he gets an opportunity even then) the man who loves the publick welfare better than his own reputation, is obliged thus to anticipate, and, as far as in him lies, to get possession of the assembly beforehand, or he will not have it in his power to reply. I demanded yesterday the liberty of replying; it was refused me; I dare believe

It was necessary to render the crown hereditary, in order that it might not prove a perpetual cause of civil dissensions; thence resulted the necessity of rendering the king's person unblameable and sacred, without which the throne could never have been sheltered from the attempts of the ambitious. Now what power is there not already in the hands of a chief, who is rendered hereditary and inviolable? Shall his refusing to execute a law, which he deems contrary to those interests, of which his character of head of the executive power makes him guardian-shall such a refusal, I say, suffice to hurl him from his high prerogatives? That would be destroying with one hand what you had built up with the other; it would be coupling to a precaution of peace and security, the means most proper to raise continually the most dreadful tempests.

Let us pass from this consideration to the instruments of power, which ought to be in the hands of the supreme head of the nation. It is over five-andtwenty millions of men that he is appointed to command; it is over every point of an extent of thirty thousand square miles that his power must be, without intermission, ready to show itself for the purposes of protection or defence; and will any one pretend, that the chief, the lawful depositary of the means which such a power requires, may be obliged to execute laws to which he hath not given consent?

however, that I had driven the partisans of the veto suspensive to their last intrenchments.

I venture to promise that I will invincibly establish these three points against every objection which the partisans of the vero suspensive may raise against the royal sanction, when at the conclusion of the debate I shall have liberty to answer them. At present, I only ask them to reflect on the formidable power with which the king of a great empire is necessarily invested, and how dangerous it is to provoke him to turn it against the legislature, as must infallibly happen, if they determine upon any one moment whatever, when he sees no way of escaping the necessity of promulgating a law to which he hath not consented.

Note of M. De Mirabeau,

But, through what dreadful troubles, through what convulsive and sanguinary insurrections would they send us to combat the resistance of the royal power? When the law is under the safeguard of publick opinion, its sway is truly imperious over the ruler whom you have armed with the whole publick force; but which is the moment when we may reckon upon this empire of publick opinion? Is it not when the head of the exceutive power hath himself given his consent to the law, and when that consent is known to all the citizens? Is it not then, and then alone, that publick opinion sets the law irrevocably above him, and compels him, under pain of becoming an object of general horrour, to perform what he hath promised; for his consent, in quality of head of the executive power, is nothing else than a solemn engagement to execute that law on which he hath just conferred his sanction?

And let it not be said, that the generals of armies are depositaries of very important powers, and are, nevertheless, obliged to obey the orders of their su periours, be their opinion what it may with respect to the nature of those orders. The generals of armies are not hereditary chiefs; their persons are not inviolable; their authority ceases in the presence of him whose orders they perform; and, if the comparison is to be pushed still further, we must necessarily admit that those are, for the most part, but very indifferent generais, who carry into execution dispositions which they have not approved. Such then are the dangers which you are going to risk. And for what object? Where is the real efficacy of the veto suspensive?

Is it not expedient, as in my system, that the constitution should take certain precautions against the royal veto? Should the king overturn those precautions, will he not easily set himself above the law? Your plan, therefore, is useless, even in your own theory; and I will prove it to be dangerous in mine.

The refusal of the royal sanction can be supposed only in two cases: