Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant and
presumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all
their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. By
following those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities
at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal
blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificed
her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that she
might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of
a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing
originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other
of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom
in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine
morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority,
doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an
insolent irreligion in opinions and practices,--and has extended through
all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, or
laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions that
usually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new
principles of equality in France.
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