So far is France from being formidable to its neighbors for its domestic
strength, that I conceive it will be as much as all its neighbors can
do, by a steady guaranty, to keep that monarchy at all upon its basis.
It will be their business to nurse France, not to exhaust it. France,
such as it is, is indeed highly formidable: not formidable, however, as
a great republic; but as the most dreadful gang of robbers and murderers
that ever was embodied. But this distempered strength of France will be
the cause of proportionable weakness on its recovery. Never was a
country so completely ruined; and they who calculate the resurrection of
her power by former examples have not sufficiently considered what is
the present state of things. Without detailing the inventory of what
organs of government have been destroyed, together with the very
materials of which alone they can be recomposed, I wish it to be
considered what an operose affair the whole system of taxation is in the
old states of Europe. It is such as never could be made but in a long
course of years.
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