A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to SwitzerlandCooper, James Fenimore
History
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland
Cooper, James Fenimore
France -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
Frankfort has been the subject of recent political disturbances, and, I
heard this morning from a banker, that there existed serious discontents
all along the Rhine. As far as I can learn, the movement proceeds from a
desire in the trading, banking, and manufacturing classes, the _nouveaux
riches_, in short, to reduce the power and influence of the old feudal
and territorial nobility. The kingly authority, in our time, is not much
of itself, and the principal question has become, how many or how few,
or, in short, _who_ are to share in its immunities. In this simple fact
lies the germ of the revolution in France, and of reform in England.
Money is changing hands, and power must go with it. This is, has been,
and ever will be the case, except in those instances in which the great
political trust is thrown confidingly into the hands of all; and even
then, in half the practical results, money will cheat them out of the
advantages. Where the pressure is so great as to produce a recoil, it is
the poor against the rich; and where the poor have rights to stand on,
the rich are hard at work to get the better of the poor. Such is the
curse of Adam, and man himself must be changed before the disease can be
cured. All we can do, under the best constructed system, is to mitigate
the evil.
We left Frankfort at eleven, declining the services of a celebrated
_voiturier_, called _le petit Savoyard_, whom François introduced, with
a warm recommendation of fidelity and zeal. These men are extensively
known, and carry their _soubriquets_, as ships do their names. The
little Savoyard had just discharged a cargo of _miladies_, bound to
England, after having had them on his charter-party eighteen months, and
was now on the look-out for a return freight. As his whole equipments
were four horses, the harness, and a long whip, he was very desirous of
the honour of dragging my carriage a hundred leagues or so, towards any
part of the earth whither it might suit my pleasure to proceed. But it
is to be presumed that _miladies_ were of full weight, for even
François, who comes of a family of _voituriers_, and has a
fellow-feeling for the craft, is obliged to admit that the cattle of _le
petit_ appear to have been overworked. This negotiation occupied an
hour, and it ended by sending the passport to the post.
We were soon beyond the tower that marks the limits of the territory of
Frankfort, on the road to Darmstadt. While mounting an ascent, we had a
distant glimpse of the town of Homberg, the capital and almost the whole
territory of the principality of Hesse Homberg; a state whose last
sovereign had the honour of possessing an English princess for a wife.
Truly there must be something in blood, after all; for this potentate
has but twenty-three thousand subjects to recommend him!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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