; and they tell them afterwards how much of that
barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they are prodigal
of light with regard to grievances, so the people find them sparing in
the extreme with regard to redress. They know that not only certain
quit-rents and personal duties, which you have permitted them to redeem,
(but have furnished no money for the redemption,) are as nothing to
those burdens for which you have made no provision at all; they know
that almost the whole system of landed property in its origin is
feudal,--that it is the distribution of the possessions of the original
proprietors made by a barbarous conqueror to his barbarous
instruments,--and that the most grievous effects of the conquest axe the
land-rents of every kind, as without question they are.

The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these ancient
proprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if they fail, in any degree, in the
titles which they make on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers,
they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find that
men are equal; and the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought
not to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of any men, who by
nature are no better than themselves, and who, if they do not labor for
their bread, are worse. They find, that, by the laws of Nature, the
occupant and subduer of the soil is the true proprietor,--that there is
no prescription against Nature,--and that the agreements (where any
there are) which have been made with the landlords during the time of
slavery are only the effect of duresse and force,--and that, when the
people reentered into the rights of men, those agreements were made as
void as everything else which had been settled under the prevalence of
the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that they
see no difference between an idler with a hat and a national cockade and
an idler in a cowl or in a rochet. If you ground the title to rents on
succession and prescription, they tell you from the speech of M. Camus,
published by the National Assembly for their information, that things
ill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription,--that the title of
those lords was vicious in its origin,--and that force is at least as
bad as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you that the
succession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of
property, and not rotten parchments and