These
articles of account produced no inquiry or discussion in the
National Assembly.
THE advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating
the vices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their
country itself by painting almost all that could have attracted the
attention of strangers, I mean their nobility and their clergy, as
objects of horror. If this were only a libel, there had not been
much in it. But it has practical consequences. Had your nobility and
gentry, who formed the great body of your landed men and the whole
of your military officers, resembled those of Germany at the period
when the Hansetowns were necessitated to confederate against the
nobles in defense of their property; had they been like the Orsini and
Vitelli in Italy, who used to sally from their fortified dens to rob
the trader and traveller; had they been such as the Mamelukes in Egypt
or the Nayres on the coast of Malabar, I do admit that too critical an
inquiry might not be advisable into the means of freeing the world
from such a nuisance. The statues of Equity and Mercy might be
veiled for a moment. The tenderest minds, confounded with the dreadful
exigency in which morality submits to the suspension of its own
rules in favor of its own principles, might turn aside whilst fraud
and violence were accomplishing the destruction of a pretended
nobility which disgraced, whilst it persecuted, human nature.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213