M. le Veillard and the Abbé de la Roche gave me, my dear and respectable colleague, your latest news, more recent than those which you sent me directly a while ago, and the former told me about the imminent arrival of the Memoirs of your life which you have promised him for a long time. They will be a valuable monument, these Memoirs written by a true philosopher, whose genius has enlightened the physical and political sciences, who has taught us about lightning and the ways to protect against it, about liberty and the ways of acquiring and preserving it; and who, joining the gifts of genius with social grace and knowing the value of friendship, has allowed the charms of this last virtue to blend with sentiments of respect and veneration. A philosopher at last who will have judged himself with the same impartiality that he judges others; it will be a cherished monument for your friends, who wish that the last chapter of this life so precious for mankind will be as long as possible.

We see with pleasure that your ailments do not increase, even if they have not decreased, and we hope that, after having left you free to work at public affairs these past three years, they will leave you still much longer to enjoy the respect and tranquillity that should crown such a beautiful life.

There have already been eight states to accept the new federal constitution; Virginia will soon be the ninth, and the constitution will be put into effect with a few modifications brought to the draft drawn up by the convention. There is one point, to which it seems that no one made objections, and yet which could use some modifications. This is the extent of the power granted to the President of the Congress, and the possibility of his remaining indefinitely in that role. I would hope that Washington, your worthy counterpart in the great American revolution, will give yet another example to the world, of a man who would limit his own powers and who, invested with the highest leadership by his compatriots, would enlighten them on the dangers of blind trust. Such a man, knowing how to lead them, would set limits on his own authority, and on those of his successors which might be less worthy than he of this trust.

While you have been occupied with these great goals, the France which, when you left, was speaking so zealously of other peoples' liberty, is starting to think that a small amount of this liberty might be good for her as well. It has been thirty years since good writings, and fourteen years since your excellent examples, have brought true light; since then, Ministers, some despotic and some grasping, by their attacks on personal liberty, or on property, have caused us to reflect upon our great principles. The ignorance of these principles, sometimes real and sometimes agreed upon, have left us in a state of calm which was not happiness, but that the uneducated, frivolous or stupid, who always make up the greatest number, took to be happiness. The excess of wrongdoing has reawakened our minds. M. de Calonne has exposed the terrible state of our finances. His successors have used violent means, and groups which had been zealous promoters of the Royal Power, and often passive or passionate instruments of Ministerial despotism,— or, when they wanted to fight this despotism, replaced it with their own, which was worse yet. These groups called upon public opinion as their only means of resistance. They called upon the nation, and the request for the Estates General became a unanimous appeal from one end of France to another. The Ministers, instead of cleverly seizing upon this idea, seemed to find it repugnant. They delay the announcement of the convocation under the pretext that the structure is difficult to establish, and that before calling this Assembly, it is necessary to let everyone calm down a bit. This last reason is completely pointless, because the more the Ministers seem to reject or withdraw from the general will, the more it is to be feared that passions will heat up.

As for the idea that the structure is difficult to establish, it is not entirely without founding. It is not that the form of the Estates General, which has indeed undergone some changes, is not now fairly fixed by the different [sessions?] which have occurred from 1483 to [161?], but more because the makeup of the Assembly is wrong. The distinction between the three Orders—the first of which, the Clergy, should not even be one; the second of which, the Nobility, is a constitutional vice, and thereby enjoys, like the first one, privileges burdensome for the nation; and the third of which, the Third Estate, which should be the only Order, and should comprise all property-owners, is still for the most part made up of privileged people—this distinction in three orders, I say, is a great obstacle. The diversity of interests could break up this Assembly into a system of three groups, all enemies of each other, and none truly a friend to the nation. If our well-intentioned Ministers wanted to seize upon this idea of co[nvoking] a National Assembly, they could have restructured this vicious system, and given us a form of representation founded on principles of justice and good politics. But, having been pushed into calling the convocation, they now must follow the old structure, and it will be a viciously structured assembly drawing up our constitution. The lights recently cast on political economy are our only hope and consolation; they will triumph perhaps over the Ministers, the Orders, the Bodies, over their passions and prejudices. It is our posterity who will judge this prophecy, and I fear that our first steps in the pursuit of liberty will not be guided by healthy reason, which alone could bring us a speedy and durable happiness.

You Americans were in a much more favorable position to establish a good Constitution; you had none of these distinctions of class and birth, the superstition and feudal nature of which have infected our old Europe. It was partly to set themselves free from the unhealthy influence of these prejudices that your ancestors abandoned their homelands and sought a refuge in the American forests which they transformed into fertile fields. They had suckled, along with British milk, the love and the principles of liberty which, although sometimes poorly understood by that nation, have nonetheless never been extinguished. These principles and this love took deep root in the hearts of your compatriots; so when the Ministers and the Parliament of England wanted to enslave you, you demonstrated an energy which they didn't expect, and when you came to seat yourselves among the Nations, you based your government and administration on individual freedom, freedom of property and consequently of commerce, and freedom of religion; you allowed man to enjoy all the rights which Nature gave him, and of which legislators or circumstances have more or less deprived him almost everywhere else.

But the pleasure of writing to you has made me go past the limits of a letter. If I was less aware of your indulgence, I would ask your pardon, but your friendship, and the interest of the subject, guarantee me your forgiveness in advance; give from afar your benediction to a nation who had the merit at least to sense your own, and by the enlightenment which emanates from its breast is worthy of the interest you show in its fate, although it has not often been able to be the first to profit from the lessons that she has given to others.

I will finish my letter by presenting you, on the part of the author as well as myself, with a dissertation on day-blindness, an endemic disease in a part of our property at la Rocheguyon; you will find in it the names of M. de Condorcet and the Abbé Rochon, who ask me to add their tender regards to those of my entire family; do not forget to mention me to your family, and always be persuaded, my dear and respectable colleague, of the attachment and the friendship that I have devoted to you for life