therefore on the ground of interest, opposed to both. They account
also for the readiness which always appears in such governments for
engaging in wars by remarking on the different motives which
produced them. In despotic governments wars are the effect of pride;
but in those governments in which they become the means of taxation,
they acquire thereby a more permanent promptitude.

  The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these
evils, has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and
ministers, and placed the right where the expense must fall.

  When the question of the right of war and peace was agitating in the
National Assembly, the people of England appeared to be much
interested in the event, and highly to applaud the decision. As a
principle it applies as much to one country as another. William the
Conqueror, as a conqueror, held this power of war and peace in
himself, and his descendants have ever since claimed it under him as a
right.

  Although Mr. Burke has asserted the right of the Parliament at the
Revolution to bind and control the nation and posterity for ever, he
denies at the same time that the Parliament or the nation had any
right to alter what he calls the succession of the crown in anything
but in part, or by a sort of modification. By his taking this ground
he throws the case back to the Norman Conquest, and by thus running
a line of succession springing from William the Conqueror to the
present day, he makes it necessary to enquire who and what William the
Conqueror was, and where he came from, and into the origin, history
and nature of what are called prerogatives. Everything must have had a
beginning, and the fog of time and antiquity should be penetrated to
discover it. Let, then, Mr. Burke bring forward his William of
Normandy, for it is to this origin that his argument goes. It also
unfortunately happens, in running this line of succession, that
another line parallel thereto presents itself, which is that if the
succession runs in the line of the conquest, the nation runs in the
line of being conquered, and it ought to rescue itself from this
reproach.

  But it will perhaps be said that though the power of declaring war
descends in the heritage of the conquest, it is held in check by the
right of Parliament to withhold the supplies. It will always happen
when a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right,
and it often happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the
other, and such is the case here, for if the one rashly declares war
as a matter of right, and the other peremptorily withholds the
supplies as a matter of right, the remedy becomes as bad, or worse,
than the disease. The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other
ties its hands; but the more probable issue is that the contest will
end in a collusion between the parties, and be made a screen to both.

  On this question of war, three things are to be considered. First,
the right of declaring it: secondly, the right of declaring it:
secondly, the expense of supporting it: thirdly, the mode of
conducting it after it is declared. The French Constitution places the
right where the expense must fall, and this union can only be in the
nation. The mode of conducting it after it is declared, it consigns to
the executive department. Were this the case in all countries, we
should hear but little more of wars.

  Before I proceed to consider other parts of the French Constitution,
and by way of relieving the fatigue of argument, I will introduce an
anecdote which I had from Dr. Franklin.

  While the Doctor resided in France as Minister from America,
during the war, he had numerous proposals made to him by projectors of
every country and of every kind, who wished to go to the land that
floweth with milk and honey, America; and among the rest, there was
one who offered himself to be king. He introduced his proposal to
the Doctor by letter, which is now in the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of
Paris- stating, first, that as the Americans had dismissed or sent
away*[6] their King, that they would want another. Secondly, that
himself was a Norman. Thirdly, that he was of a more ancient family
than the Dukes of Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, his
line having never been bastardised. Fourthly, that there was already a
precedent in England of kings coming out of Normandy, and on these
grounds he rested his offer, enjoining that the Doctor would forward
it to America. But as the Doctor neither did this, nor yet sent him an
answer, the projector wrote a second letter, in which he did not, it
is true, threaten to go over and conquer America, but only with
great dignity proposed that if his offer was not accepted, an
acknowledgment of about L30,000 might be made to him for his
generosity! Now, as all arguments respecting succession must
necessarily connect that succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke's
arguments on this subject go to show that there is no English origin
of kings, and that they are descendants of the Norman line in right of
the Conquest. It may, therefore, be of service to his doctrine to make
this story known, and to inform him, that in case of that natural
extinction to which all mortality is subject, Kings may again be had
from Normandy, on more reasonable terms than William the Conqueror;
and consequently, that the good people of England, at the revolution
of 1688, might have done much better, had such a generous Norman as
this known their wants, and they had known his. The chivalric
character which Mr. Burke so much admires, is certainly much easier to
make a bargain with than a hard dealing Dutchman. But to return to the
matters of the constitution-

  The French Constitution says, There shall be no titles; and, of
consequence, all that class of equivocal generation which in some
countries is called "aristocracy" and in others "nobility," is done
away, and the peer is exalted into the MAN.