and, to prevent them
from reclaiming their rights, murdered the proprietors. The whole of the
process has passed before our eyes, and been conducted, indeed, with a
greater degree of rapidity than could be expected.

My opinion, then, is, that public contributions ought only to be raised
by the public will. By the judicious form of our Constitution, the
public contribution is in its name and substance a grant. In its origin
it is truly voluntary: not voluntary according to the irregular,
unsteady, capricious will of individuals, but according to the will and
wisdom of the whole popular mass, in the only way in which will and
wisdom can go together. This voluntary grant obtaining in its progress
the force of a law, a general necessity, which takes away all merit, and
consequently all jealousy from individuals, compresses, equalizes, and
satisfies the whole, suffering no man to judge of his neighbor or to
arrogate anything to himself. If their will complies with their
obligation, the great end is answered in the happiest mode; if the will
resists the burden, every one loses a great part of his own will as a
common lot. After all, perhaps, contributions raised by a charge on
luxury, or that degree of convenience which approaches so near as to be
confounded with luxury, is the only mode of contribution which may be
with truth termed voluntary.

I might rest here, and take the loan I speak of as leading to a solution
of that question which I proposed in my first letter: "Whether the
inability of the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a
submission to the indignities and the calamities of a peace with the
Regicide power?" But give me leave to pursue this point a little
further.

I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been
upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification,
that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by
the burdens brought and laid upon the people. But to know where the
burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people. As
to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their
earnings. I deny that the stock of their persons is diminished in a
greater proportion than the common sources of populousness abundantly
fill up: I mean constant employment; proportioned pay according to the
produce of the soil, and, where the soil fails, according to the
operation of the general capital; plentiful nourishme