Next, the nobles meet the storm. “They are traitors; they are enemies of the people; they are plotting against our liberties; they are living in palaces, and rolling in splendid carriages from the hard earnings of the poor.” The populace rage against them all over the land. They besiege the House of Representatives; they beseech--they threaten. At last they carry their point; the estates of the nobles are seized; they are declared traitors, and doomed to banishment or death. Again millions are placed at the control of the people’s agents. It is calculated that by this and former confiscations, more than _a thousand millions_ of dollars were seized for the use of the people. Again fraud, peculation, profusion, and mismanagement abound, till all this incomprehensible treasure vanishes away. Meantime, all the laws have been altered; all the property has passed from its wonted owners to new hands; the wealthy, educated, and noble are down; the poor, the ignorant, the base hold the offices, wealth, and power. Everything is mismanaged. Everything goes wrong. The people grow distracted with their sufferings, and again demand the cause. “It is the king; it is his extravagant Austrian queen, who rules him and his court. They thwart all our measures. They are sending to brother kings for soldiers to crush our liberties. They are gathering armies on our borders to overwhelm us.” Next, the helpless king and his family become the mark for popular rage. Every indignity and insult was inflicted and borne with a patient fortitude that extorted admiration, till finally the king is first led forth to a bloody death; next the queen is sacrificed; next the virtuous sister of the king; and, last, the little dauphin is barbarously murdered. Still misery rules through the nation. The friends of the king and former government, and all the peaceable citizens and supporters of order, are called _aristocrats_, and every art devised to render them objects of fear, suspicion, and hatred, especially such of them as hold property to tempt the cupidity of the people. Through the whole land two parties exist; one the distressed, bewildered, exasperated people, raging for their rights, and driven to madness by the fancied opposition of aristocrats; the other a trembling, cowering minority, suffering insult, and fear, and robbery, and often a cruel death. And now priests and nobles and king and queen are all gone, and yet the people are more distressed than ever before. Amid these scenes of violence, confusion, and misrule, confidence has ceased, commerce has furled the sail, trade has closed the door, manufactures ceased their din, and agriculture forsaken the plough.