confiscators, true to that moneyed interest for which they were false to
every other, have found the clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of
course they declared them legally entitled to the property which their
power of incurring the debt and mortgaging the estate implied:
recognizing the rights of those persecuted citizens in the very act in
which they were thus grossly violated.

If, as I said, any persons are to mate good deficiencies to the public
creditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who managed
the agreement. Why, therefore, are not the estates of all the
comptrollers-general confiscated?[100] Why not those of the long
succession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have been enriched
whilst the nation was impoverished by their dealings and their counsels?
Why is not the estate of M. Laborde declared forfeited rather than of
the Archbishop of Paris, who has had nothing to do in the creation or in
the jobbing of the public funds? Or, if you must confiscate old landed
estates in favor of the money-jobbers, why is the penalty confined to
one description? I do not know whether the expenses of the Duke de
Choiseul have left anything of the infinite sums which he had derived
from the bounty of his master, during the transactions of a reign which
contributed largely, by every species of prodigality in war and peace,
to the present debt of France. If any such remains, why is not this
confiscated? I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the old
government. I was there just after the Duke d'Aiguillon had been
snatched (as it was generally thought) from the block by the hand of a
protecting despotism. He was a minister, and had some concern in the
affairs of that prodigal period. Why do I not see his estate delivered
up to the municipalities in which it is situated? The noble family of
Noailles have long been servants (meritorious servants I admit) to the
crown of France, and have had of course some share in its bounties. Why
do I hear nothing of the application of their estates to the public
debt? Why is the estate of the Duke de Rochefoucault more sacred than
that of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault? The former is, I doubt not, a
worthy person; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to talk of the
use, as affecting the title to property) he makes a good use of his
revenues; but it is no disrespect to him to say, what authentic
information well warrants me in saying, that the use mad