“Article 8.—The ballot shall be secret. “Article 9.—All the electors shall vote in the chief town of their district, by ballot. Each bulletin shall contain as many names as there shall be representatives to elect in the department. “No man can be named a representative of the people unless he obtain 2,000 suffrages. “Article 10.—Every representative of the people shall receive an indemnity of 25f. per day during the session.” Here is a tolerably democratic constitution, which will probably excite some little disquietude in the breasts of the holders of French stock and railway shares. Universal suffrage—a single assembly of nine hundred members, each of whom is to be paid a pound a-day during the session. To make the experiment still more perilous, the minister of public instruction to the Provisional Government has issued a circular to the ministers of instruction throughout the country, in which he enjoins them to recommend to the people “_to avoid the representatives who enjoy the advantages of education or the gifts of fortune_.”[10] This circular excited, as well it might, such a panic in Paris, that the other members of the Provisional Government were obliged to disown it. But that only makes matters worse: it shows what the Provisional Government really meant, and how completely they have already come to stand on the verge of civil war. The projected decree for levelling the National Guard, by distributing the companies of voltigeurs and chasseurs (the _élite_) through the whole mass, has already produced an address by their battalion, _in uniform_, to the Provisional Government, which was received at the Hotel de Ville by an immense crowd with cries of “_A bas les Aristocrats! on ne passe pas!_” It is no wonder the National Guard are at length alarmed. The aristocracies of knowledge and property are to be alike discarded! Ignorance and a sympathy with the most indigent class are to be the great recommendations to the electors! This is certainly making root-and-branch work; it is Jack Cade alive again. Paris, it is expected, will return for its representatives 11 of the Provisional Government, 5 Socialists, 18 Operatives, —— 34 Truly the National Guard will soon reap the whirlwind; we are not surprised the French funds have undergone so prodigious a fall. The holders of Spanish bonds and American States’ debts know how universal suffrage assemblies settle with their state-creditors. Sidney Smith has told the world something on the subject.