They are strangers to us. They do
not even go by the names of our ancient lords. Physically they may be
the same men,--though we are not quite sure of that, on your new
philosophic doctrines of personal identity. In all other respects they
are totally changed. We do not see why we have not as good a right to
refuse them their rents as you have to abrogate all their honors,
titles, and distinctions. This we have never commissioned you to do; and
it is one instance among many, indeed, of your assumption of undelegated
power. We see the burghers of Paris, through their clubs, their mobs,
and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and giving
that as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law
to us. Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes of
us all. Why should not you attend as much to the desires of the
laborious husbandman with regard to our rent, by which we are affected
in the most serious manner, as you do to the demands of these insolent
burghers relative to distinctions and titles of honor, by which neither
they nor we are affected at all? But we find you pay more regard to
their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among the rights of man to
pay tribute to his equals? Before this measure of yours we might have
thought we were not perfectly equal; we might have entertained some old,
habitual, unmeaning prepossession in favor of those landlords; but we
cannot conceive with what other view than that of destroying all respect
to them you could have made the law that degrades them.
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