Experience, upon other
data than those, is of all things the most delusive. Prudence in new
cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect. A constant vigilance and
attention to the train of things as they successively emerge, and to act
on what they direct, are the only sure courses. The physician that let
blood, and by blood-letting cured one kind of plague, in the next added
to its ravages. That power goes with property is not universally true,
and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable may
mislead us very fatally.
[Sidenote: Power separated from property.]
Whoever will take an accurate view of the state of those republics, and
of the composition of the present Assembly deputed by them, (in which
Assembly there are not quite fifty persons possessed of an income
amounting to 100_l._ sterling yearly,) must discern clearly, _that the
political and civil power of France is wholly separated from its
property of every description_, and of course that neither the landed
nor the moneyed interest possesses the smallest weight or consideration
in the direction of any public concern.
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