in universities;-but for the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferiour, unlearned, mechanical, merely inftrumental members of the profeffion. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general compofition was of obscure provincial advocates, of ftewards of petty local jurifdictions, country attornies, notaries, and the whole train of the minifters of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the moment I read the lift, I faw diftinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profes fion is held becomes the ftandard of the estimation in which the profeffors hold themselves. Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers might have been, and in many it was undoubtedly very confiderable, in that military king dom no part of the profeffion had been much regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their profeffional offices great family splendour, and were invested with great power and authority. These certainly were highly refpected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much efteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.

Whenever the fupreme authority is vested in a body fo compofed, it must evidently produce the confequences of fupreme authority placed in the hands

hands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake; who could not be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with discretion, a power, which they themselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself that these men, fuddenly, and, as it were, by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatnefs? Who could conceive, that men, who are habitually meddling, daring, fubtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of obfcure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expence to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their privatè interests, which they understood but too well? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was neceffary; it was planted in the nature of things. They muft join (if their capacity did not permit them to lead) in any project which could procure to them a litigious conftitution; which could lay open to them those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of all great convulfions and revolutions in the ftate, and particularly in all great and violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected that they would

1

attend

attend to the stability of property, whofe exiftence had always depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and infecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation, but their difpofition and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designs, must remain the fame.

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other defcriptions, of more fober minds, and more enlarged understandings. Were they then to be awed by the super-eminent authority and awful dignity of a handful of countryclowns, who have feats in that affembly, fome of whom are faid not to be able to read and write? and by not a greater number of traders, who, though fomewhat more inftructed, and more confpicuous in the order of fociety, had never known any thing beyond their counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers, than to become their counterpoife. With fuch a dangerous difproportion, the whole muft needs be governed by them. To the faculty of law was joined a pretty confiderable proportion of the faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the law, poffeffed in France its just estimation. Its profeffors, therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to fentiments of dignity. But fuppofing they had ranked

as

as they ought to do, and as with us they do ac tually, the fides of fickbeds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expence, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more folid fubftance of land. To thefe were joined men of other defcriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the interefts of a great ftate was to be expected, and as little regard to the stability of any inftitution ; men formed to be inftruments not controls. Such in general was the compofition of the Tiers Etat in the national affembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the flightest traces of what we call the natural landed intereft of the country.

We know that the British houfe of commons, without fhutting its doors to any merit in any clafs, is, by the fure operation of adequate causes, filled with every thing illuftrious in rank, in defcent, in hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politick diftinction, that the country can afford. But fuppofing, what hardly can be fuppofed as a cafe, that the house of commons fhould be compofed in the fame manner with the Tiers Etat in France, would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or even conceived without horrour? God forbid I should infinuate any thing derogatory to that profeffion, which is another priesthood, ad

miniftering

miniftering the rights of facred juftice. But whilft I revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do, as much as one man can do, to prevent their exclusion from any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lie to nature. They are good and useful in the compofition; they must be mischievous if they preponderate fo as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for others. It cannot, efcape obfervation, that when men are too much confined to profeffional and faculty habits, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather difabled than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehenfive connected view of the various complicated external and internal interefts which go to the formation of that multifarious thing called a state.

After all, if the house of commons were to have an wholly profeffional and faculty compofition, what is the power of the house of commons, circumfcribed and shut in by the immoveable barriers of laws, ufages, pofitive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the house of lords, and every moment of its existence at the difcretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or diffolve us? The power of the house of commons, direct or indirect, is indeed great; and long may it be able VOL. V.

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