mmittee of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a vigorous police
on this subject, and, for the first time, the imposition of a tax to
maintain the poor, for whoso present relief great sums appear on the
face of the public accounts of the year.[112] In the mean time the
leaders of the legislative clubs and coffee-houses are intoxicated with
admiration at their own wisdom and ability. They speak with the most
sovereign contempt of the rest of the world. They toll the people, to
comfort them in the rags with which they have clothed them, that they
are a nation of philosophers; and sometimes, by all the arts of
quackish parade, by show, tumult, and bustle, sometimes by the alarms
of plots and invasions, they attempt to drown the cries of indigence,
and to divert the eyes of the observer from the ruin and wretchedness of
the state. A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied with
a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the
price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is
real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no
other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very
equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her
companions, and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.

The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating the
vices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their country
itself, by painting almost all that could have attracted the attention
of strangers, I mean their nobility and their clergy, as objects of
horror. If this were only a libel, there had not been much in it. But it
has practical consequences. Had your nobility and gentry, who formed
the great body of your landed men and the whole of your military
officers, resembled those of Germany, at the period when the Hanse towns
were necessitated to confederate against the nobles in defence of their
property,--had they been like the Orsini and Vitelli in Italy, who used
to sally from their fortified dens to rob the trader and traveller,--had
they been such as the Mamelukes in Egypt, or the Nayres on the coast of
Malabar,--I do admit that too critical an inquiry might not be advisable
into the means of freeing the world from such a nuisance. The statues of
Equity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment. The tenderest minds,
confounded with the dreadful exigence in which morality submits to the
susp