t disgust; and therefore I say no more upon it.

It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their drawing and
re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day, on the
play between the Treasury and the _Caisse d'Escompte_, and on all these
old, exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy
of state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about the
rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of
gunpowder. Here, then, the metaphysicians descend from their airy
speculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? The
examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their
breath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert them,
their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifest failure of
their abilities, they take credit for their benevolence. When the
revenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some of
their late proceedings, to value _themselves_ on the relief given to the
people. They did not relieve the people. If they entertained such
intentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? The
people relieved themselves, in spite of the Assembly.

But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit of
this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to the
people in any form? M. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper
circulation, lets you into the nature of this relief. His speech to the
National Assembly contained a high and labored panegyric on the
inhabitants of Paris, for the constancy and unbroken resolution with
which they have borne their distress and misery. A fine picture of
public felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable firmness of mind
to endure benefits and sustain redress? One would think, from the speech
of this learned lord mayor, that the Parisians, for this twelvemonth
past, had been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade,--that
Henry the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their supply, and
Sully thundering with his ordnance at the gates of Paris,--when in
reality they are besieged by no other enemies than their own madness and
folly, their own credulity and perverseness. But M. Bailly will sooner
thaw the eternal ice of his Atlantic regions than restore the central
heat to Paris, whilst it remains "smitten with the cold, dry, petrific
mace" of a false and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this