When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic reason on
which you have set your image and superscription, you cry it down as
base money and tell them you will pay for the future with French
guards, and dragoons, and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them,
the second-hand authority of a king, who is only the instrument of
destroying, without any power of protecting either the people or his
own person. Through him it seems you will make yourselves obeyed. They
answer: You have taught us that there are no gentlemen, and which of
your principles teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected?
We know without your teaching that lands were given for the support of
feudal dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices. When you took
down the cause as a grievance, why should the more grievous effect
remain? As there are now no hereditary honors, and no distinguished
families, why are we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought not to
exist? You have sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no other
character, and with no other title, but that of exactors under your
authority. Have you endeavored to make these your rent-gatherers
respectable to us? No. You have sent them to us with their arms
reversed, their shields broken, their impresses defaced; and so
displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged
things, that we no longer know them.
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