They will cultivate the caille d'Eglife, under the facred aufpices of this prelate, with much more profit than its vineyards or its corn-fields. They will employ their talents according to their habits and their interefts. They will not follow the plough whilft they can direct treasuries, and govern provinces. Your legiflators, in every thing new, are the very first who have founded a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this fpirit into it as its vital breath. The great object in these politics is to metamorphofe France, from a great kingdom into one great play-table; to turn its inhabitants into a nation of gamefters; to make fpeculation as extenfive as life; to mix it with all its concerns; and to divert the whole of the hopes and fears of the people from their ufual channels, into the impulfes, paffions, and fuperftitions of those who live on chances. They loudly proclaim their opinion, that this their present fyftem of a republic cannot poffibly exift without this kind of gaming fund; and that the very thread of its life is fpun out of the ftaple of thefe fpeculations. The old gaming in funds was mifchievous enough undoubtedly; but it was fo only to individuals. Even when it had its greatest extent, in the Miffifippi and South Sea, it affected but few, comparatively; where it extends further, as in lotteries, the fpirit has but a fingle object. But where the law, which in moft circumftances forbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itfelf debauched, fo as to reverfe its nature and policy, and exprefsly to force the fubject to this destructive table, by bringing the fpirit and fymbols of gaming into the minuteft matters, and engag-ing every body in it, and in every thing, a more dreadful epidemic diftemper of that kind is fpread than yet has appeared in the world. With you, a man can neither earn nor buy his dinner without a fpeculation. What he receives in the morning will not have the fame value at night. What he is compelled to take as pay for an old debt, will not be received as the fame when he is to contract a new one; nor will it be the fame when, by prompt payment, he would avoid contracting any debt at all. Industry muft wither away. Oeconomy must be driven from your country. Careful provifion will have no exift ence. ence. Who will labour without knowing the amount of his pay ? Who will study to increase what none can estimate? Who will accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he faves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth would be not the providence of a man, but the diftempered inftin&t of a jackdaw. The truly melancholy part of the policy of fyftematically making a nation of gamefters is this; that tho' all are forced to play, few can understand the game; and fewer ftill are in a condition to avail themselves of the knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the few who conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on the country-people is vifible. The townfman can calculate from day to day: not fo the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first brings his corn to market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to take the affignat at par; when he goes to the fhop with this money, he finds it feven per cent. the worfe for croffing the way. This market he will not readily refort to again. The townfpeople will be inflamed! they will force the country-people to bring their corn. Refiftance will begin, and the murders of Paris and St. Dennis may be renewed through all France. What fignifies the empty compliment paid to the country by giving it perhaps more than its fhare in the theory of your reprefentation? Where have you placed the real power over monied and landed circulation? Where have you placed the means of raifing and falling the value of every man's freehold? Those whofe operations can take from, or add ten per cent. to, the poffeffions of every man in France, must be the mafters of every man in France. The whole of the power obtained by this revolution will fettle in the towns among the burghers, and the monied directors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant have, none of them, habits, or inclinations, or experience, which can lead them to any fhare in this the fole fource of power and influence now left in France. The very nature of a country life; the very nature of landed property, in all the occupations, and all the pleasures they they afford, render combination and arrangement (the fole way of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impoffible amongst country-people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the industry, they are always diffolving into individuality. Any thing in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealoufy, the ephemerous tale that does its bufinefs and dies in a day, all these things, which are the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds of followers, are not eafily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They affemble, they arm, they act with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be fuftained. They cannot, proceed fyftematically. If the country gentlemen attempt an influence through the mere income of their property, what is it to that of those who have ten times their income to fell, and who can ruin their property by bringing their plunder to meet it at market. If the landed man wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of his land, and raifes the value of affignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he must take to contend with him. The country gentleman, therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man of liberal views and habits, attached to no prófeffion, will be as completely excluded from the government of his country as if he were legiflatively profcribed. It is obvious, that in the towns, all the things which confpire against the country gentleman, combine in favour of the money manager and director. In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diverfion, their business, their idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact. Their virtues and their vices are fociable; they are always in garrison; and they come embodied and half difciplined into the hands of those who mean to form them for civil, or military action. All these confiderations leave no doubt on my mind, that if this monster of a conftitution can continue, France will be wholly governed by the agitators in corporations, by focieties in the towns formed of directors of affignats, and trustees for the fale of church lands, attornies, agents, money Cc money-jobbers, fpeculators, and adventurers, compofing an ignoble oligarchy founded on the deftruction of the crown, the church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all the deceitful dreams and vifions of the equality and rights of men. In the Serbonian bog" of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed, funk, and loft for ever. Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would be tempted to think fome great offences in France must cry to heaven, which has thought fit to punish it with a fubjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in which no comfort or compenfation is to be found in any, even of those false splendours, which, playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind from feeling themselves dishonoured even whilft they are oppreffed. I must confefs I am touched with a forrow, mixed with fome indignation, at the conduct of a few men, once of great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with fpecious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom; who have lent their fair reputation, and the authority of their high-founding names, to the defigns of men with whom they could not be acquainted; and have thereby made their very virtues operate to the ruin of their country. So far as to the first cementing principle. The fecond material of cement for their new republic is the fuperiority of the city of Paris; and this I admit is ftrongly connected with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and confifcation. It is in this part of the project we must look for the cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurifdictions, ecclefiaftical and fecular, and the diffolution of all ancient combinations of things, as well as the formation of so many finall unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one great spring of all their politics. It is through the power of Paris, now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this faction direct, or rather command the whole legiflative and the whole executive government. Every thing therefore must be done which can confirm the authority of that city over the other republics. Paris is compact; he has an ( 203 ) an enormous ftrength, wholly difproportioned to the force of any of the fquare republics; and this ftrength is collected and condensed within a narrow compafs. Paris has a natural and easy connection of its parts, which will not be affected by any scheme of a geometrical constitution, nor does it much fignify whether its proportion of representation be more or lefs, fince it has the whole draft of fishes in its drag-net. The other divifions of the kingdom being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual means, and even principles of union, cannot, for fome time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the fubordinate members, but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm this part of the plan, the affembly has lately come to a refolution, that no two of their republics shall have the fame commander in chief. To a person who takes a view of the whole, the ftrength of Paris thus formed, will appear a fyftem of general weakness. It is boafted, that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas fhould be funk, and that the people should no longer be Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans, but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one affembly. But instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is, that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever was attached by a fenfe of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of fquare measurement. He never will glory in belonging to the Checquer, No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and refting places. Such divifions of our country as have been formed by habit, and not by a fudden jirk of authority, were fo many little images of the great country in which the heart found fomething which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished by this fubordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a fort of elemental training to thofe higher and more large regards, by which alone men come to be affected, as with their own concern, in the profperity of a kingdom fo extenfive as that of France. In that general territory |