It has destroyed every resource of the state which depends
upon opinion and the good-will of individuals. The riches of convention
disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these,
I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is
complete and absolute. We go about asking when assignats will expire,
and we laugh at the last price of them. But what signifies the fate of
those tickets of despotism? The despotism will find despotic means of
supply. They have found the short cut to the productions of Nature,
while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged to wind through the
labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the
fruit of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself. Were France but
half of what it is in population, in compactness, in applicability of
its force, situated as it is, and being what it is, it would be too
strong for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they are, and
proceeding as they proceed. Would it be wise to estimate what the world
of Europe, as well as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz Khan,
upon a contemplation of the resources of the cold and barren spot in the
remotest Tartary from whence first issued that scourge of the human
race? Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties of the rocks,
or from the paper circulation of the sands of Arabia, the power by which
Mahomet and his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful
empires of the world, beat one of them totally to the ground, broke to
pieces the other, and, in not much longer space of time than I have
lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an
empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees?
Material resources never have supplied, nor ever can supply, the want of
unity in design and constancy in pursuit.
Pages:
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399