If we consider the acting power in Prance, in any legal construction of
public law, as the people, the question is decided in favor of the
republic one and indivisible. But we have decided for monarchy. If so,
we have a king and subjects; and that king and subjects have rights and
privileges which ought to be supported at home: for I do not suppose
that the government of that kingdom can or ought to be regulated by the
arbitrary mandate of a foreign confederacy.
As to the faction exercising power, to suppose that monarchy can be
supported by principled regicides, religion by professed atheists, order
by clubs of Jacobins, property by committees of proscription, and
jurisprudence by revolutionary tribunals, is to be sanguine in a degree
of which I am incapable. On them I decide, for myself, that these
persons are not the legal corporation of France, and that it is not with
them we can (if we would) settle the government of France.
Since, then, we have decided for monarchy in that kingdom, we ought also
to settle who is to be the monarch, who is to be the guardian of a
minor, and how the monarch and monarchy is to be modified and supported;
if the monarch is to be elected, who the electors are to be,--if
hereditary, what order is established, corresponding with an hereditary
monarchy, and fitted to maintain it; who are to modify it in its
exercise; who are to restrain its powers, where they ought to be
limited, to strengthen them, where they are to be supported, or, to
enlarge them, where the object, the time, and the circumstances may
demand their extension.
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