ng
the law when summoned in its name.

31. Men united in society should have legal means of resisting
oppression.

32. There is oppression when any law violates the natural rights, civil
and political, which it should guarantee.

There is oppression when the law is violated by public officials in its
application to individual cases.

There is oppression when arbitrary actions violate the rights of citizen
against the express purpose (_expression_) of the law.

In a free government the mode of resisting these different acts of
oppression should be regulated by the Constitution.

33. A people possesses always the right to reform and alter its
Constitution. A generation has no right to subject a future generation
to its laws; and all heredity in offices is absurd and tyrannical.

XVII. PRIVATE LETTERS TO JEFFERSON.

Paris, 20 April, 1793.

My dear Friend,--The gentleman (Dr. Romer) to whom I entrust this
letter is an intimate acquaintance of Lavater; but I have not had the
opportunity of seeing him, as he had set off for Havre prior to my
writing this letter, which I forward to him under cover from one of his
friends, who is also an acquaintance of mine.

We are now in an extraordinary crisis, and it is not altogether without
some considerable faults here. Dumouriez, partly from having no fixed
principles of his own, and partly from the continual persecution of the
Jacobins, who act without either prudence or morality, has gone off
to the Enemy, and taken a considerable part of the Army with him. The
expedition to Holland has totally failed, and all Brabant is again in
the hands of the Austrians.

You may suppose the consternation which such a sudden reverse of fortune
has occasioned, but it has been without commotion. Dumouriez threatened
to be in Paris in three weeks. It is now three weeks ago; he is still on
the frontier near to Mons with the Enemy, who do not make any progress.
Dumouriez has proposed to re-establish the former Constitution in
which plan the Austrians act with him. But if France and the National
Convention act prudently this project will not succeed. In the first
place there is a popular disposition against it, and there is force
sufficient to prevent it. In the next place, a great deal is to be taken
into the calculation with respect to the Enemy. There are now so many
persons accidentally jumbled together as to render it exceedingly
difficult to them to agree upon any common obje