Historical voices

Those whose operations can take from or add ten per cent to the possessions of every man in France must be the masters of every man in France.

The many must be the dupes of the few who conduct the machine of these speculations.

The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a nation of gamesters is this,--that, though all are forced to play, few can understand the game, and fewer still are in a condition to avail themselves of that knowledge.

If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw.

He knows little, indeed, of the influence of money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the management of a moneyed concern which is so much more extensive, and in its nature so much more depending on the managers, than any of ours.

One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an effect seemingly collateral, but direct, I have no doubt, in the minds of those who conduct this business; that is, its effect in producing an oligarchy in every one of the republics.

But if the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink the paper currency, the cement is gone with the circulation.

As, in the end, all the members of this elective Constitution are equally fugitive, and exist only for the election, they may be no longer the same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is to be responsible when he solicits for a renewal…

You consider the breach of trust in the representative so principally that you do not at all regard the question of his fitness to execute it.

Superficial, new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish, broken, ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all your future governors.

In case of abuse, that body of primary electors never can call the representative to an account for his conduct.

Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by those who have any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what relates to a personal choice.

For what end are these primary electors complimented, or rather mocked, with a choice?

To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.

Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plain that they do not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed, they elect as little in appearance as reality.

This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are thrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have chosen.

The member who goes to the National Assembly is not chosen by the people, nor accountable to them.

With you there is little, or rather no, connection between the last representative and the first constituent.

The very inequality of representation, which is so foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents us from thinking or acting as members for districts.

Not only our monarchy and our peerage secure the equality on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of the House of Commons itself.

With us the King and the Lords are several and joint securities for the equality of each district, each province, each city.

This government of reference is a trustee for the whole, and not for the parts.

This standing, unalterable, fundamental government would make, and it is the only thing which could make, that territory truly and properly a whole.

Each deputy to the Assembly would be the representative of France, and of all its descriptions, of the many and of the few, of the rich and of the poor, of the great districts and of the small.