He well knew that
the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can
pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate
except in what it derives from a just and proportioned imposition upon
the citizens at large. This was engaged, and nothing else could be
engaged, to the public creditor. No man can mortgage his injustice
as a pawn for his fidelity.
It is impossible to avoid some observation on the contradictions
caused by the extreme rigor and the extreme laxity of this new
public faith which influenced in this transaction, and which
influenced not according to the nature of the obligation, but to the
description of the persons to whom it was engaged. No acts of the
old government of the kings of France are held valid in the National
Assembly except its pecuniary engagements: acts of all others of the
most ambiguous legality. The rest of the acts of that royal government
are considered in so odious a light that to have a claim under its
authority is looked on as a sort of crime. A pension, given as a
reward for service to the state, is surely as good a ground of
property as any security for money advanced to the state. It is
better; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain that service. We
have, however, seen multitudes of people under this description in
France who never had been deprived of their allowances by the most
arbitrary ministers in the most arbitrary times, by this assembly of
the rights of men robbed without mercy.
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