oned to the means of the citizens, and the
least likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the
generation of that private wealth from whence the public fortune must be
derived. By suffering the several districts, and several of the
individuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue
they might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a new
inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments were
regulated by dispositions. The parts of the kingdom which were the most
submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to the
commonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state. Nothing turns out to
be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. To fill up all the
deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every
kind which were to be expected, what remained to a state without
authority? The National Assembly called for a voluntary
benevolence,--for a fourth part of the income of all the citizens, to be
estimated on the honor of those who were to pay. They obtained something
more than could be rationally calculated, but what was far indeed from
answerable to their real necessities, and much less to their fond
expectations. Rational people could have hoped for little from this
their tax in the disguise of a benevolence,--tax weak, ineffective, and
unequal,--a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened,
and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity,
and public spirit,--a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length the mask
is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with little success) of
exacting their benevolence by force.

This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was to be supported
by another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific imbecility.
The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of the patriotic
contribution. John Doe was to become security for Richard Roe. By this
scheme they took things of much price from the giver, comparatively of
small value to the receiver; they ruined several trades; they pillaged
the crown of its ornaments, the churches of their plate, and the people
of their personal decorations. The invention of those juvenile
pretenders to liberty was in reality nothing more than a servile
imitation of one of the poorest resources of doting despotism. They took
an old, huge, full-bottomed periwig out of the wardrobe of the
antiquated frippery of Louis