As a nation, the french are certainly the most eloquent people in the world; their lively feelings giving the warmth of passion to every argument they attempt to support. And speaking fluently, vanity leads them continually to endeavour to utter their sentiments, without considering whether they have any thing to recommend them to notice, beside a happy choice of expressions. Only thinking then of speaking, they are the most impatient of hearers, coughing, hemming, and scraping with their feet, most audibly, to beguile the time. Laying aside also, in the assembly, not only their national politeness, but the common restraints of civility; good manners seldom supply the place of reason, when they are angry. And as the slightest contradiction sets them on fire, three parts out of four of the time, which ought to have been employed in serious investigation, was consumed in idle vehemence. Whilst the applauses and hisses of the galleries increased the tumult; making the vain still more eager to mount the stage. Thus every thing contributing to excite the emotions, which lead men only to court admiration, the good of the people was too often sacrificed to the desire of pleasing them. And so completely was the tide of their affection for the king turned, that they seemed averse to his having any portion of legislative authority in the new constitution. The duke de Liancourt divided the question respecting the share of power he was to enjoy as a part of the government. _1st. Is the royal sanction indispensably necessary, to give the actual force of law to the decrees of the national assembly? 2dly. Ought the king to be an integrant portion of the legislature?_ In England the phrase _royal assent_ has been adopted, as expressive of a positive act; but the french, rather choosing to distinguish the same act of power by a negative, fixed on the latin word _veto_, _I forbid_. And then it became a question, how far this _veto_ ought to extend, supposing the prince to be invested with it.—Was it decisively to obstruct the enaction of a law passed by the legislative body? or only to suspend it, till an appeal could be made to the people by a new election?