1710. CONSTITUTION (French), Advice of Jefferson on.—
I wish you success in
your meeting [of the Notables]. I should form
better hopes of it, if it were divided into two
houses instead of seven. Keeping the good
model of your neighboring country [England]
before your eyes, you may get on, step by step,
towards a good constitution. Though that model
is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages
than any new one which could be proposed,
it is better to make that the object. If
every advance is to be purchased by filling the
royal coffers with gold, it will be gold well employed.—
To Marquis Lafayette. Washington ed. ii, 131.
(P.
1787)
