force as might seriously endanger our liberties. "In respect, however, to the recent law of succession in France, to which I have alluded, _I would, presumptuously, perhaps, hazard a conjecture, that if the government do not change the law, the law, in half a century, will change the government; and that this change will be not in favour of the power of the crown, as some European writers have supposed, but against it_. Those writers only reason upon what they think correct general principles, in relation to this subject. They acknowledge a want of experience. Here we have had that experience; and we know that a multitude of small proprietors, acting with intelligence, and that enthusiasm which a common cause inspires, constitute not only a formidable, but an invincible power." Pp. 47-8. In less than six years from the time when this statesman-like prediction was made, the King of France, at the opening of the Legislative Chambers, thus strangely and portentously echoed it, "Legislation ought to provide by successive improvements, for all the wants of society. _The progressive partitioning of landed estates essentially contrary to the spirit of a monarchical government_ would enfeeble the guaranties which the charter has given to my throne and to my subjects. Measures will be proposed to you, gentlemen, to establish the consistency which ought to exist between the political law and the civil law; and to preserve the patrimony of families, without restricting the liberty of disposing of one's property. The preservation of families is connected with, and affords a guaranty to political stability, which is the first want of states, and which is especially that of France after so many vicissitudes." But the discovery came too late. The foundations, on which to build or sustain the cumbrous system of the old monarchy, were already taken away; and the events of the last summer, while they would almost persuade us, that the "Attendant Spirit" so boldly given by the orator in this very discourse to one of the great founders of our government, had opened to him, also, on the Rock of Plymouth, "a vision of the future;"[7]--these events, we say, can leave little doubt in the mind of any man, that the speaker himself may live long enough,--as God grant he may!--to witness the entire fulfilment of his own extraordinary prophecy, and to see the French people erecting for themselves a sure and stable government, suited to the foundation, on which alone it can now rest.