means
of which they avoided the payment of their debts,
and defeated their creditors.]

It was therefore necessary to separate the first class of emigrants
from the last; and after establishing this distinction, the government
should have made a fair appeal to the justice and generosity of the
nation. Frenchmen, who yield so readily to every dignified sentiment,
would not have allowed the faithful and virtuous servants of their
King to languish in poverty. We may appeal to the universal assent
which was given to the proposal[12] made by the marshal duke of
Tarentum, that ten millions of francs should be annually appropriated
for the indemnification of the emigrants who had been deprived of
their property, and of the soldiers who had lost their "_dotations_."

[Footnote 12: This proposal was not carried into
execution.]

But the government party should not have attempted to assist the
emigrants by resorting to means offensive to the nation, and
derogatory to the charter. And, above all, they should not have puffed
up the emigrants with proud and silly hopes. If they had been left to
themselves, they would have fallen in with the purchasers of their
property, they would have treated for an amicable settlement of their
claims, and they would have regained possession of their hereditary
estates without jarring and without scandal.

The partiality which was shown towards the emigrants on all occasions
produced another evil of still greater extent. It contributed, even
more than the efforts of disaffection, in persuading the peasantry
that the government wished to chain them again to the soil, and to
render them once more the tributaries both of the nobility and of the
priesthood.

The revolution has taught the countryman to know that he is somebody
in the state. After the revolution the peasants became rich, and they
were delivered from the double vassalage of former days, when they
crouched before the priest and the lord: therefore they could not
think of any alteration without horror. Day after day they heard or
they read (in France every body reads now,) that the government
intended to restore the "_ancien regime_." And the restoration of the
"_ancien regime_" was interpreted by them, as well as by many others,
to mean the restoration of tithes, vassalage, and feudal rights. They
were confirmed in their dangerous and disquieting opinion by