In this constitution the people was the source of all powers, but it exercised none; it was entrusted only with election in the first instance, and its magistrates were selected by men chosen from among the enlightened portions of the community. The latter constituted the assembly, the law courts, the public offices, the corporations, the militia, and thus possessed all the force and all the power of the state. It alone was fit to exercise them, because it alone had the intelligence necessary for the conduct of government. The people was not yet sufficiently advanced to participate in power, consequently, it was only by accident, and in the most casual and evanescent manner, that power fell into its hands; but it received civic education, and was disciplined to government in the primary assemblies, according to the true aim of society, which is not to confer its advantages as a patrimony on one particular class, but to make all share in them, when all are capable of acquiring them. This was the leading characteristic of the constitution of 1791; as each, by degrees, became competent to enjoy the right, he was admitted to it; it extended its limits with the extension of civilization, which every day calls a greater number of men to the administration of the state. In this way it had established true equality, whose real character is admissibility, as that of inequality is exclusion. In rendering power transferable by election, it made it a public magistracy; whilst privilege, in rendering it hereditary by transmission, makes it private property. The constitution of 1791 established homogeneous powers which corresponded among themselves, and thus reciprocally restrained each other; still, it must be confessed, the royal authority was too subordinate to popular power. It is never otherwise: sovereignty, from whatever source derived, gives itself a feeble counterpoise when it limits itself. A constituent assembly enfeebles royalty; a king who is a legislator limits the prerogatives of an assembly.