Such gentlemen have
since had more reason to repent of their want of foresight than I hope
any of the same class will ever have in this country. But this spirit
was far from general, even amongst the gentlemen. As to the lower
orders, and those little above them, in whose name the present powers
domineer, they were far from discovering any sort of dissatisfaction
with the power and prerogatives of the crown. That vain people were
rather proud of them: they rather despised the English for not having a
monarch possessed of such high and perfect authority. _They_ had felt
nothing from _lettres de cachet_. The Bastile could inspire no horrors
into _them_. This was a treat for their betters. It was by art and
impulse, it was by the sinister use made of a season of scarcity, it was
under an infinitely diversified succession of wicked pretences wholly
foreign to the question of monarchy or aristocracy, that this light
people were inspired with their present spirit of levelling. Their old
vanity was led by art to take another turn: it was dazzled and seduced
by military liveries, cockades, and epaulets, until the French populace
was led to become the willing, but still the proud and thoughtless,
instrument and victim of another domination.
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