1. What else could be expected from the courtier, who could write in these terms to madame de Maintenon: God has been so gracious to me, madam, that, in whatever company I find myself, I never have occasion to blush for the gospel or the king.

2. For example, the reception of a portuguese adventurer, under the character of a persian ambassador. A farce made by the court to rouse the blunted senses of the king.

3. Memoires du marechal de Richelieu.

4. In this reply will be found many of the reasons, that have been lately repeated; and some (a proof of the progress of reason), which no one had the audacity to repeat, when standing up in defence of privileges.

5. It is well known, that for a long time he wished to convoke the states-general; and it was not without difficulty, that Dubois made him abandon this design. During the year 1789, a curious memorial has been reprinted, which he wrote on this occasion; and it is, like the author, a model of impudence.

6. Since the constituent assembly equalized the impost, Calonne has boasted, that he proposed a mode of levying equal taxes; but that the nobility would not listen to any such motion, tenaciously maintaining their privileges. This blind obstinacy of opposing all reform, that touched their exemptions, may be reckoned among the foremost causes, which, in hurrying the removal of old abuses, tended to introduce violence and disorder.—And if it be kept in remembrance, that a conduct equally illiberal and disingenuous warped all their political sentiments, it must be clear, that the people, from whom they considered themselves as separated by immutable laws, had cogent grounds to conclude, that it would be next to impossible to effect a reform of the greater part of those perplexing exemptions and arbitrary customs, the weight of which made the peculiar urgency, and called with the most forcible energy for the revolution. Surely all the folly of the people taken together was less reprehensible, than this total want of discernment, this adherence to a prejudice, the jaundiced perception of contumelious ignorance, in a class of men, who from the opportunity they had of acquiring knowledge, ought to have acted with more judgment. For they were goaded into action by inhuman provocations, by acts of the most flagrant injustice, when they had neither rule nor experience to direct them, and after their temperance had been destroyed by years of sufferings, and an endless catalogue of reiterated and contemptuous privations.

7. Importance of religious opinions.

8. ‘The code of étiquette’, says Mirabeau, ‘has been hitherto the sacred fire of the court and privileged orders.’

9. Under the reign of Louis XV two hundred and thirty thousand lettres de cachet had been issued; and after this, who will assert, that this was not an inveterate evil, which ought to be eradicated; for it is an insult to human reason, to talk of the modification of such abuses, as seem to be experiments to try how far human patience can be stretched.

10. Count Lally-Tolendal.

11. This was written some months before the death of the queen.

12. Such is ever the conduct of soi-disant patriots.

13. This is an event much more important at Paris, than it would be in London.

14. The mayor.

15. This man, the abbé Lefebure, remained all night, and the greater part of the next day, standing over a barrel of gun-powder, persisting to keep off the people, with undaunted courage, though several of them, to torment him, brought pipes to smoke near it; and one actually fired a pistol close by, that set fire to his hair.

16. Lally-Tolendal said of La Fayette, at this time, that ‘he spoke of liberty as he had defended it.’

17. The supplying of Paris with provision always depended on a nice arrangement of circumstances, capable of being controlled by the government of the state. It is not like London, and other great cities, the local position of which was previously pointed out by nature, and of which the welfare depends on the great and perpetual movements of commerce, which they themselves regulate. To cut off the provision from London, you must block up the port, and interdict in an open manner an intercourse, on which the wealth of the nation in a great measure depends. Paris, on the contrary, might be famished in a few days by a secret order of the court. All the people of the place would feel the effect, and no person be able to ascertain the cause. These considerations render it easy to account for the continued scarcity of provision in Paris during the summer of 1789. No person can doubt, but the court viewed the revolution with horrour; and that, among the measures which they took to prevent it, they would not overlook so obvious an expedient, as that of cutting off the supplies from the capital; as they supposed the people would lay the blame on the new order of things, and thus be disgusted with the revolution.

18. The lamp-posts, which are only to be found in squares, and places where there are not two rows of houses, are much more substantial than in England.

19. ‘In August 1778,’ says Lally-Tolendal, ‘the laws were overturned; and twenty-five millions of men without justice or judges;—the public treasury without funds, and without resource;—the sovereign authority was usurped by the ministers;—and the people without any other hope than the states-general;—yet without confidence in the promise of the king.’

And, Mounier also gives a similar sketch. ‘We have not a fixed or complete form of government—we have not a constitution, because all the powers are confounded—because no boundary is traced out.—The judicial power is not even separated from the legislative.—Authority is dispersed; it’s various parts are always in opposition; and amidst their perpetual shocks the rights of the lower class of citizens are betrayed.—The laws are openly despised, or rather we are not agreed what ought to be called laws.’

20. In the Bastille, it is true, were found but seven prisoners.—Yet, it ought to be remarked, that three of them had lost their reason—that, when the secrets of the prison-house were laid open, men started with horrour from the inspection of instruments of torture, that appeared to be almost worn out by the exercise of tyranny—and that citizens were afraid even for a moment to enter the noisome dungeons, in which their fellow creatures had been confined for years.

21. The cruelties of the half civilized romans, combined with their unnatural vices, even when literature and the arts were most cultivated, prove, that humanity is the offspring of the understanding, and that the progress of the sciences alone can make men wiser and happier.

22. Mirabeau appears to have been continually hurt by the want of dignity in the assembly.—By the inconsistency, which made them stalk as heroes one moment, with a true theatrical stride, and the next cringe with the flexible backs of habitual slaves.

23. ‘Let us compare,’ he further adds, ‘the number of innocents sacrificed by mistake, by the sanguinary maxims of the courts of criminal judicature, and the ministerial vengeance exercised secretly in the dungeons of Vincennes, and in the cells of the Bastille, with the sudden and impetuous vengeance of the multitude, and then decide on which side barbarity appears. At the moment when the hell created by tyranny for the torment of it’s victims opens itself to the public eye; at the moment when all the citizens have been permitted to descend into those gloomy caves, to poize the chains of their friends, of their defenders; at the moment when the registers of those iniquitous archives are fallen into all hands; it is necessary, that the people should be essentially good, or this manifestation of the atrocities of ministers would have rendered them as cruel as themselves!’

24. These members seem to have formed a just estimate of the french character.

25. Some french wags have laid a great stress on these decrees passing after dinner.

26. Lally-Tolendal, in particular; for giving his opinion on the subject of two chambers, he said:—‘It is not doubtful at present, and for this first assembly, that a single chamber is preferable, and perhaps necessary—There are so many difficulties to be surmounted, so many prejudices to be conquered, so many sacrifices to be made, such old habits to root out, so great a power to control; in a word so much to destroy, and almost all to create anew. This moment, gentlemen, which we are so happy as to have seen, of which it is impossible a description can be given—when private characters, orders of men, and provinces, are vying with each other, who will make the greatest sacrifices to the public good—when all press together at the tribune, to renounce voluntarily, not only odious privileges, but even those just rights, which appear to you an obstacle to the fraternity and equality of all the citizens. This moment, gentlemen, this noble and rich enthusiasm which hurries you along, this new order of things which you have begun—all this—most assuredly, could never have been produced but from the union of all persons, of all opinions, and of all hearts.’—

27. ‘It is worthy of remark, that the divine right of tithes was never insisted on,’ says a french writer, ‘even by the clergy, during this debate. Yet the year before, when the same question was brought forward in the irish house of parliament, great stress was laid on this gothic idea of their origin.’

28. It is observable, that the satisfaction of the people was by no means equal to the discontent manifested by the privileged orders.

29. See the article 10. ‘No man ought to be molested on account of his opinions, not even on account of his religious opinions, provided his avowal of them does not disturb the public order established by law.’

30. Calonne.

31. In Holland almost all the taxes are collected in the shape of excise.

In France, formerly, the taxes were generally internal; but, since the mode established of making a revenue of 300,000,000 l. by the land and house tax part of the 580,000,000 l. estimated to be the peace establishment, it appears, that this was too great a proportion to be obtained in that way. Hence the revenue of France has lately failed in a great degree.

In America the taxes of the federal government have been lately established solely on the customs, that is to say, on goods imported. These operate two ways; encouraging home manufactures, and discouraging the manufactures of other countries.

Great Britain has levied her revenue on customs both inwards and outwards; on excise, principally internal; on stamps, which operate both internally and externally; and on fixed objects, as well as internal consumption, (as salt).

32.

33. They used to lie to be owned in a conspicuous part of the city.

34. There are upwards of thirty scattered throughout the city.

35. I use this word according to the french acceptation, because we have not one to express so forcibly the same signification.