When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic reason on which
you have set your image and superscription, you cry it down as base
money, and tell them you will pay for the future with French guards and
dragoons and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them, the second-hand
authority of a king, who is only the instrument of destroying, without
any power of protecting either the people or his own person. Through
him, it seems, you will make yourselves obeyed. They answer,--"You have
taught us that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principles
teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We know, without your
teaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal dignities,
feudal titles, and feudal offices. When you took down the cause as a
grievance, why should the more grievous effect remain? As there are now
no hereditary honors and no distinguished families, why are we taxed to
maintain what you tell us ought not to exist? You have sent down our old
aristocratic landlords in no other character and with no other title but
that of exactors under your authority. Have you endeavored to make these
your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You have sent them to us with
their arms reversed, their shields broken, their impresses defaced,--and
so displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged
things, that we no longer know them.
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