At length the mask is thrown off, and they are
now trying means (with little success) of exacting their benevolence
by force.
This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was to be
supported by another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific
imbecility. The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of
the patriotic contribution. John Doe was to become security for
Richard Roe. By this scheme they took things of much price from the
giver, comparatively of small value to the receiver; they ruined
several trades; they pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches
of their plate, and the people of their personal decorations. The
invention of these juvenile pretenders to liberty was in reality
nothing more than a servile imitation of one of the poorest
resources of doting despotism. They took an old, huge, full-bottomed
periwig out of the wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis the
Fourteenth to cover the premature baldness of the National Assembly.
They produced this old-fashioned formal folly, though it had been so
abundantly exposed in the Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon, if to
reasonable men it had wanted any arguments to display its mischief and
insufficiency. A device of the same kind was tried, in my memory, by
Louis the Fifteenth, but it answered at no time. However, the
necessities of ruinous wars were some excuse for desperate projects.
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