Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction,
have great influence on the public mind; the alliance, therefore, of
these writers with the monied interest, had no small effect in removing
the popular odium and envy which attended that species of wealth. These
writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a great
zeal for the poor, and the lower orders, whilst in their satires they
rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults of courts, of
nobility, and of priesthood. They became a sort of demagogues. They
served as a link to unite, in favour of one object, obnoxious wealth to
restless and desperate poverty.
CITY OF PARIS.
The second material of cement for their new republic is the
superiority of the city of Paris: and this I admit is strongly
connected with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and
confiscation. It is in this part of the project we must look for the
cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and
jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all
ancient combinations of things, as well as the formation of so many
small unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is
evidently one great spring of all their politics. It is through the
power of Paris, now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the
leaders of this faction direct, or rather command, the whole
legislative and the whole executive government.
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