y child, which is the most destructive of all the
consequences entailed by the Revolution? You would never guess. In Louis
XVI. the Revolution has decapitated every head of a family. The family
has ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire to become
a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in proclaiming
the equal rights of all children to their father's inheritance, they
have killed the family spirit and created the State treasury. But all
this has paved the way for weakened authority, for the blind force
of the masses, for the decay of art and the supremacy of individual
interests, and has left the road open to the foreign invader.

"We stand between two policies--either to found the State on the basis
of the family, or to rest it on individual interest--in other words,
between democracy and aristocracy, between free discussion and
obedience, between Catholicism and religious indifference. I am among
the few who are resolved to oppose what is called the people, and
that in the people's true interest. It is not now a question of feudal
rights, as fools are told, nor of rank; it is a question of the State
and of the existence of France. The country which does not rest on the
foundation of paternal authority cannot be stable. That is the foot of
the ladder of responsibility and subordination, which has for its summit
the King.

"The King stands for us all. To die for the King is to die for oneself,
for one's family, which, like the kingdom, cannot die. All animals have
certain instincts; the instinct of man is for family life. A country
is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is
interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of
scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven
or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot
of land, blind, in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is
coming when this too will be torn from them.

"Terrible calamities are in store for us, in case our party fails.
Nothing will be left but penal or fiscal laws--your money or your life.
The most generous nation on the earth will have ceased to obey the
call of noble instincts. Wounds past curing will have been fostered and
aggravated, an all pervading jealousy being the first. Then the upper
classes will be submerged; equality of desire will be taken for equality
of strength; true distinction, even when proved