France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
And yet, in those days, for men that have a country, what a glow
of patriotism burns in many a heart; penetrating inwards to the
very purse! So early as the 7th of August, a _Don Patriotique_,
“a Patriotic Gift of jewels to a considerable extent,” has been
solemnly made by certain Parisian women; and solemnly accepted,
with honourable mention. Whom forthwith all the world takes to
imitating and emulating. Patriotic Gifts, always with some heroic
eloquence, which the President must answer and the Assembly
listen to, flow in from far and near: in such number that the
honourable mention can only be performed in “lists published at
stated epochs.” Each gives what he can: the very cordwainers have
behaved munificently; one landed proprietor gives a forest;
fashionable society gives its shoebuckles, takes cheerfully to
shoe-ties. Unfortunate females give what they “have amassed in
loving.”[227] The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is
good.
Beautiful, and yet inadequate! The Clergy must be “invited” to
melt their superfluous Church-plate,—in the Royal Mint. Nay
finally, a Patriotic Contribution, of the forcible sort, must be
determined on, though unwillingly: let the fourth part of your
declared yearly revenue, for this once only, be paid down; so
shall a National Assembly make the Constitution, undistracted at
least by insolvency. Their own wages, as settled on the 17th of
August, are but Eighteen Francs a day, each man; but the Public
Service must have sinews, must have money. To _appease_ the
Deficit; not to “_combler_, or choke the Deficit,” if you or
mortal could! For withal, as Mirabeau was heard saying, ‘it is
the Deficit that saves us.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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