ry nitre. Their Academy _del
Cimento_, (_per antiphrasin_,) with Morveau and Hassenfratz at its head,
have computed that the brave _sans-culottes_ may make war on all the
aristocracy of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish of the Duke
of Bedford's buildings.[21]

While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with these experiments
upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the Sieyes, and the rest of the
analytical legislators and constitution-venders, are quite as busy in
their trade of decomposing organization, in forming his Grace's vassals
into primary assemblies, national guards, first, second, and third
requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the travelling
guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen,
supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and
assessors of the maximum.

The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly wake this
noble Duke, and push him to an endeavor to save some little matter from
their experimental philosophy. If he pleads his grants from the crown,
he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has received them from the
pillage of superstitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a
little, because they are enemies to all corporations and to all
religion. However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell his
Grace, or his learned council, that all such property belongs to the
_nation_,--and that it would be more wise for him, if he wishes to live
the natural term of a _citizen_, (that is, according to Condorcet's
calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon
the national property. This is what the _serjeants_-at-law of the rights
of man will say to the puny _apprentices_ of the common law of England.

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You may as well think the
garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the cords of ribbon
insultingly stretched by the National Assembly to keep the sovereign
_canaille_ from intruding on the retirement of the poor King of the
French as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the
Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers;
brave _sans-culottes_ are no formalists. They will no more regard a
Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will
not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they
will make no difference between the superior of a Covent Garden