At length the mask
is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with little success) of
exacting their benevolence by force.
This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was to be supported
by another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific imbecility.
The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of the patriotic
contribution. John Doe was to become security for Richard Roe. By this
scheme they took things of much price from the giver, comparatively of
small value to the receiver; they ruined several trades; they pillaged
the crown of its ornaments, the churches of their plate, and the people
of their personal decorations. The invention of those juvenile
pretenders to liberty was in reality nothing more than a servile
imitation of one of the poorest resources of doting despotism. They took
an old, huge, full-bottomed periwig out of the wardrobe of the
antiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth, to cover the premature
baldness of the National Assembly. They produced this old-fashioned
formal folly, though it had been so abundantly exposed in the Memoirs of
the Duke de Saint-Simon,--if to reasonable men it had wanted any
arguments to display its mischief and insufficiency. A device of the
same kind was tried in my memory by Louis the Fifteenth, but it answered
at no time. However, the necessities of ruinous wars were some excuse
for desperate projects.
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