The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 3 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 3 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
You knew, long ago, that the meeting of the States is to be at Versailles
on the 27th of April. This country is entirely occupied in its elections,
which go on quietly and well. The Duke d'Orleans is elected for Villers
Cotterels. The Prince of Condé has lost the election he aimed at; nor is
it certain he can be elected anywhere. We have no news from Auvergne,
whither the Marquis de La Fayette is gone. In general, all the men of
influence in the country are gone into the several provinces to get their
friends elected, or be elected themselves. Since my letter to you, a
tumult arose in Bretagne, in which four or five lives were lost. They are
now quieter, and this is the only instance of a life lost, as yet, in this
revolution. The public mind is now so far ripened by time and discussion,
that there seems to be but one opinion on the principal points. The
question of voting by persons of orders is the most controverted; but even
that seems to have gained already a majority among the Nobles. I fear more
from the number of the Assembly, than from any other cause. Twelve hundred
persons are difficult to keep to order, and will be so, especially, till
they shall have had time to frame rules of order. Their funds continue
stationary, and at the level they have stood at for some years past. We
hear so little of the parliaments for some time past, that one is hardly
sensible of their existence. This unimportance is probably the forerunner
of their total re-modification by the nation. The article of legislation,
is the only interesting one on which the court has not explicitly declared
itself to the nation. The Duke d'Orleans has given instructions to his
proxies in the baillages, which would be deemed bold in England, and are
reasonable beyond the reach of an Englishman, who, slumbering under a kind
of half reformation in politics and religion, is not excited by anything
he sees or feels, to question the remains of prejudice. The writers of
this country, now taking the field freely and unrestrained, or rather
involved by prejudice, will rouse us all from the errors in which we have
been hitherto rocked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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