And is not the king, is not the National
Assembly, and are not all who elect the National Assembly, likewise
paid? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by their
receiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your resolutions, all
your proceedings, all your debates, all the works of your doctors in
religion and politics have industriously been put into their hands,
and you expect that they will apply to their own case just as much
of your doctrines and examples as suits your pleasure.
EVERYTHING depends upon the army in such a government as yours,
for you have industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices
and, as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government.
Therefore, the moment any difference arises between your National
Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have recourse to
force. Nothing else is left to you, or rather you have left nothing
else to yourselves. You see, by the report of your war minister,
that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a
view of internal coercion.* You must rule by an army; and you have
infused into that army by which you rule, as well as into the whole
body of the nation, principles which after a time must disable you
in the use you resolve to make of it. The king is to call out troops
to act against his people, when the world has been told, and the
assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to
fire on citizens.
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