They were told, in answer to
their claim to the bread earned with their blood, that their
services had not been rendered to the country that now exists.
This laxity of public faith is not confined to those unfortunate
persons. The Assembly, with perfect consistency it must be owned, is
engaged in a respectable deliberation how far it is bound by the
treaties made with other nations under the former government, and
their committee is to report which of them they ought to ratify, and
which not. By this means they have put the external fidelity of this
virgin state on a par with its internal.
It is not easy to conceive upon what rational principle the
royal government should not, of the two, rather have possessed the
power of rewarding service and making treaties, in virtue of its
prerogative, than that of pledging to creditors the revenue of the
state, actual and possible. The treasure of the nation, of all things,
has been the least allowed to the prerogative of the king of France or
to the prerogative of any king in Europe. To mortgage the public
revenue implies the sovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the
public purse. It goes far beyond the trust even of a temporary and
occasional taxation. The acts, however, of that dangerous power (the
distinctive mark of a boundless despotism) have been alone held
sacred. Whence arose this preference given by a democratic assembly to
a body of property deriving its title from the most critical and
obnoxious of all the exertions of monarchical authority? Reason can
furnish nothing to reconcile inconsistency, nor can partial favor be
accounted for upon equitable principles.
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