At present, you seem in
everything to have strayed out of the high road of nature. The
property of France does not govern it. Of course, property is
destroyed and rational liberty has no existence. All you have got
for the present is a paper circulation and a stock-jobbing
constitution; and as to the future, do you seriously think that the
territory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-three
independent municipalities (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them), can ever be governed as one body or can ever be set in motion
by the impulse of one mind? When the National Assembly has completed
its work, it will have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will
not long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They
will not bear that this body should monopolize the captivity of the
king and the dominion over the assembly calling itself national.
Each will keep its own portion of the spoil of the church to itself,
and it will not suffer either that spoil, or the more just fruits of
their industry, or the natural produce of their soil to be sent to
swell the insolence or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of Paris. In
this they will see none of the equality, under the pretense of which
they have been tempted to throw off their allegiance to their
sovereign as well as the ancient constitution of their country.
There can be no capital city in such a constitution as they have
lately made.
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