Arrived ourselves at the last bounds of liberty and equality, trampling
under our feet all human superstitions, (after, however, a four years'
war with them,) we attempt all at once to raise to the same eminence
men, strangers even to the first elementary principles of liberty, and
plunged for fifteen hundred years in ignorance and superstition; we
wished to force men to see, when a thick cataract covered their eyes,
even before we had removed that cataract; we would force men to see,
whose dulness of character had raised a mist before their eyes, and
before that character was altered.[8]
Do you believe that the doctrine which now prevails in France would have
found many partisans among us in 1789? No: a revolution in ideas and in
prejudices is not made with that rapidity; it moves gradually; it does
not escalade.
Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by seduction; nor is it the
sword that begets love of liberty.
Joseph the Second also borrowed the language of philosophy, when he
wished to suppress the monks in Belgium, and to seize upon their
revenues. There was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the
hideous countenance of a greedy despot; and the people ran to arms.
Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the
_revolutionary power_.
We have seen in the commissioners of the National Convention nothing but
proconsuls working the mine of Belgium for the profit of the French
nation, seeking to conquer it for the sovereign of Paris,--either to
aggrandize his empire, or to share the burdens of the debts, and furnish
a rich prize to the robbers who domineered in France.
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