on on the rights of the prince and people, having first cheated,
and then offered violence to both, has been able to triumph, and to
employ with success the forged signature of an imprisoned sovereign, and
the spurious voice of dictated addresses, to a subsequent ratification
of things that had never received any previous sanction, general or
particular, expressed or implied, from the nation, (in whatever sense
that word is taken,) or from any part of it.

After the weighty and respectable part of the people had been murdered,
or driven by the menaces of murder from their houses, or were dispersed
in exile into every country in Europe,--after the soldiery had been
debauched from their officers,--after property had lost its weight and
consideration, along with its security,--after voluntary clubs and
associations of factious and unprincipled men were substituted in the
place of all the legal corporations of the kingdom arbitrarily
dissolved,--after freedom had been banished from those popular
meetings[25] whose sole recommendation is freedom,--after it had come to
that pass that no dissent dared to appear in any of them, but at the
certain price of life,--after even dissent had been anticipated, and
assassination became as quick as suspicion,--such pretended ratification
by addresses could be no act of what any lover of the people would
choose to call by their name. It is that voice which every successful
usurpation, as well as this before us, may easily procure, even without
making (as these tyrants have made) donatives from the spoil of one part
of the citizens to corrupt the other.

The pretended _rights of man_, which have made this havoc, cannot be the
rights of the people. For to be a people, and to have these rights, are
things incompatible. The one supposes the presence, the other the
absence, of a state of civil society. The very foundation of the French
commonwealth is false and self-destructive; nor can its principles be
adopted in any country, without the certainty of bringing it to the very
same condition in which France is found. Attempts are made to introduce
them into every nation in Europe. This nation, as possessing the
greatest influence, they wish most to corrupt, as by that means they are
assured the contagion must become general. I hope, therefore, I shall be
excused, if I endeavor to show, as shortly as the matter will admit, the
danger of giving to them, either avowedly or tacitly, the smallest
c