To have an adequate idea of the wealth of England, we must visit the provinces, and see how the nobility, the gentry, and especially the farmers and country people in general live. The magnificence of the former, and the abundance which prevails among the latter classes, must astonish the natives of any other country in Europe. To retain a favourable notion of the wealth of France, we must remain in the capital, or visit a few trading or manufacturing towns; but must seldom enter the chateau of the Seigneur, or the hut of the peasant. In the one, we shall find nothing but tawdry furniture, and from the other we shall be scared by penury. A failure of crops, or a careless administration, may occasion distress and scarcity of bread among the common people at a particular time: But when there is a permanent poverty through various reigns, and for a long tract of years, among the peasantry of such a country as France; this seems to me the surest proof of a careless, and consequently an oppressive government. Yet the French very seldom complain of their government, though often of their governors; and never of the King, but always of the minister. Although the enthusiastic affection which the people of this nation once felt for their present monarch be greatly abated, it is not annihilated. Some of the courtiers indeed, who are supposed to administer to the King’s pleasures, are detested. The imprudent ostentatious luxury of the mistress, is publicly execrated; but their censure of the King, even where they think themselves quite safe, never bursts out as it would in some other nations, in violent expressions, such as, Curse his folly,—his weakness, or—his obstinacy. No: Even their censure of him is intermingled with a kind of affectionate regret.—Naturellement il est bon, they say.—And when they observe the deplorable anxiety and disgust in his countenance, which are the concomitants of a constitution jaded by pleasure, and of a mind incapable of application, they cry, Mon Dieu, qu’il est triste!—Il est malheureux lui-même;—comment peut il penser à nous autres? I am persuaded, that, in spite of the discontent which really subsists at present in France, the King might recover the esteem and affection of his subjects at once by the simple manœuvre of dismissing his minister, and a few other unpopular characters. A Lettre de cachet, ordering them to banishment, or shutting them up in the Bastille, would be considered as a complete _revolution_ of government, and the nation would require no other _Bill of Rights_ than, what proceeded from this dreadful instrument of tyranny.