legislators for life; it thought that the upper chamber would become the instrument of the court and aristocracy, and would then be dangerous, or become useless by uniting with the commons. Thus the nobility, from dissatisfaction, and the national party, from a spirit of absolute justice, alike rejected the upper chamber. This determination of the assembly has been the object of many reproaches. The partisans of the peerage have attributed all the evils of the revolution to the absence of that order; as if it had been possible for anybody whatsoever to arrest its progress. It was not the constitution which gave it the character it has had, but events arising from party struggles. What would the upper chamber have done between the court and the nation? If in favour of the first, it would have been unable to guide or save it; if in favour of the second, it would not have strengthened it; in either case, its suppression would have infallibly ensued. In such times, progress is rapid, and all that seeks to check it is superfluous. In England, the house of lords, although docile, was suspended during the crisis. These various systems have each their epoch; revolutions are achieved by one chamber, and end with two. The royal sanction gave rise to great debates in the assembly, and violent clamours without. The question was as to the part of the king in the making of laws; the deputies were nearly all agreed on one point. They were determined, in admitting his right to sanction or refuse laws; but some desired that this right should be unlimited, others that it should be temporary. This, in reality, amounted to the same thing, for it was not possible for the king to prolong his refusal indefinitely, and the veto, though absolute, would only have been suspensive. But this faculty, bestowed on a single man, of checking the will of the people, appeared exorbitant, especially out of the assembly, where it was less understood.