They are thus bold, because they are safe from the dungeons and iron
cages of their old masters. Shall we be more tender of the tyrants
of our own time, when we see them acting worse tragedies under our
eyes? Shall we not use the same liberty that they do, when we can
use it with the same safety- when to speak honest truth only
requires a contempt of the opinions of those whose actions we abhor?
This outrage on all the rights of property was at first covered
with what, on the system of their conduct, was the most astonishing of
all pretexts- a regard to national faith. The enemies to property at
first pretended a most tender, delicate, and scrupulous anxiety for
keeping the king's engagements with the public creditor. These
professors of the rights of men are so busy in teaching others that
they have not leisure to learn anything themselves; otherwise they
would have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to
the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and
original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen
is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes
of individuals, whether possessed by acquisition or by descent or in
virtue of a participation in the goods of some community, were no part
of the creditor's security, expressed or implied. They never so much
as entered into his head when he made his bargain.
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