And is not the king, is not the
National Assembly, and are not all who elect the National Assembly,
likewise paid? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by their
receiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary is
given for the exercise of those rights. All your resolutions, all your
proceedings, all your debates, all the works of your doctors in religion
and politics, have industriously been put into their hands; and you
expect that they will apply to their own case just as much of your
doctrines and examples as suits your pleasure.
Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for you
have industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices, and, as
far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government. Therefore
the moment any difference arises between your National Assembly and any
part of the nation, you must have recourse to force. Nothing else is
left to you,--or rather, you have left nothing else to yourselves. You
see, by the report of your war minister, that the distribution of the
army is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion.[129]
You must rule by an army; and you have infused into that army by which
you rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation, principles which
after a time must disable you in the use you resolve to make of it. The
king is to call out troops to act against his people, when the world has
been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops
ought not to fire on citizens.
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