The change in this country, since you left it, is such as you can form no idea of. The frivolities of conversation have given way entirely to politics. Men, women, and children talk nothing else; and all, you know, talk a great deal. The press groans with daily productions which, in point of boldness, make an Englishman stare, who hitherto has thought himself the boldest of men. A complete revolution in this Government has, within the space of two years (for it began with the Notables of 1787), been effected merely by the force of public opinion, aided, indeed, by the want of money, which the dissipations of the court had brought on. And this revolution has not cost a single life, unless we charge to it a little riot lately in Bretagne, which began about the price of bread, became afterwards political, and ended in the loss of four or five lives. The Assembly of the States General begins the 27th of April. The representation of the people will be perfect; but they will be alloyed by an equal number of the nobility and clergy. The first great question they will have to decide will be, whether they shall vote by orders or persons. And I have hopes that the majority of the nobles are already disposed to join the Tiers Etat in deciding that the vote shall be by persons. This is the opinion _à la mode_ at present, and mode has acted a wonderful part in the present instance. All the handsome young women, for example, are for the Tiers Etat, and this is an army more powerful in France than the two hundred thousand men of the King. _To William Carmichael, May 8th, 1789._ The States General were opened day before yesterday. Viewing it as an opera, it was imposing; as a scene of business, the King's speech was exactly what it should have been, and very well delivered; not a word of the Chancellor's was heard by any body, so that, as yet, I have never heard a single guess at what it was about. M. Necker's was as good as such a number of details would permit it to be. The picture of their resources was consoling, and generally plausible. I could have wished him to have dwelt more on those great constitutional reformations, which his "Rapport au Roi" had prepared us to expect. But they observe that these points were proper for the speech of the Chancellor. _To John Jay, May 9th, 1789._