oners address them in this sort: "You
have nobles and priests among you: drive them out without delay, or we
will neither be your brethren nor your patrons." They answered: "Give us
but time; only leave to us the care of reforming these institutions."
Our answer to them was: "No! it must be at the moment, it must be on the
spot; or we will treat you as enemies, we will abandon you to the
resentment of the Austrians."

What could the disarmed Belgians object to all this, surrounded as they
were by seventy thousand men? They had only to hold their tongues, and
to bow down their heads before their masters. They did hold their
tongues, and their silence is received as a sincere and free assent.

Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to prevent that people
from retreating, and to constrain them to an union? It was foreseen,
that, as long as they were unable to effect an union, the States would
preserve the supreme authority amongst themselves. Under pretence,
therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in
their right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties and taxes, they
shut up all the treasuries. From that time no more receipts, no more
public money, no more means of paying the salaries of any man in office
appointed by the States. Thus was anarchy organized amongst the people,
that they might be compelled to throw themselves into our arms. It
became necessary for those who administered their affairs, under the
penalty of being exposed to sedition, and in order to avoid their
throats being cut, to have recourse to the treasury of France. What did
they find in this treasury? ASSIGNATS.--These assignats were advanced at
par to Belgium. By this means, on the one hand, they naturalized this
currency in that country, and on the other, they expected to make a good
pecuniary transaction. Thus it is that covetousness cut its throat with
its own hands. _The Belgians have seen in this forced introduction of
assignats nothing but a double robbery_; and they have only the more
violently hated the union with France.

Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that subject. With what
earnestness did they conjure you to take off a retroactive effect from
these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment
of debts that were contracted anterior to the union!

Did not this language energetically enough signify that they looked
upon the assignats as a leprosy, and the union as a