In France all taxes are abolished. The present powers
resort to the capital, and to the capital in kind. But a savage,
undisciplined people suffer a _robbery_ with more patience than an
_impost_. The former is in their habits and their dispositions. They
consider it as transient, and as what, in their turn, they may exercise.
But the terrors of the present power are such as no regular government
can possibly employ. They who enter into France do not succeed to
_their_ resources. They have not a system to reform, but a system to
begin. The whole estate of government is to be reacquired.
What difficulties this will meet with in a country exhausted by the
taking of the capital, and among a people in a manner new-principled,
trained, and actually disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and
impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is, and
who may have occupied themselves by revolving in their thoughts what
they were to do, if it fell to their lot to reestablish the affairs of
France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have
may be a doubt, or how it will pitch and settle at last.
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