When excessive droughts and accidents of seasons have blasted the harvest, the government has admitted no delay, no indulgence for the tax; and distress bearing hard on the village, a part of its inhabitants have taken refuge in the cities; and their burdens falling on those who remained, has completed their ruin, and depopulated the country.

If driven to extremity by tyranny and outrage, the villages have revolted, the pacha rejoices.  He wages war on them, assails their homes, pillages their property, carries off their stock; and when the fields have become a desert, he exclaims: 

“What care I?  I leave these fields to-morrow.”

The earth wanting laborers, the rain of heaven and overflowing of torrents have stagnated in marshes; and their putrid exhalations in a warm climate, have caused epidemics, plagues, and maladies of all sorts, whence have flowed additional suffering, penury, and ruin.

Oh! who can enumerate all the calamities of tyrannical government?

Sometimes the pachas declare war against each other, and for their personal quarrels the provinces of the same state are laid waste.  Sometimes, fearing their masters, they attempt independence, and draw on their subjects the chastisement of their revolt.  Sometimes dreading their subjects, they invite and subsidize strangers, and to insure their fidelity set no bounds to their depredations.  Here they persecute the rich and despoil them under false pretences; there they suborn false witnesses, and impose penalties for suppositious offences; everywhere they excite the hatred of parties, encourage informations to obtain amercements, extort property, seize persons; and when their short-sighted avarice has accumulated into one mass all the riches of a country, the government, by an execrable perfidy, under pretence of avenging its oppressed people, takes to itself all their spoils, as if they were the culprits, and uselessly sheds the blood of its agents for a crime of which it is the accomplice.

Oh wretches, monarchs or ministers, who sport with the lives and fortunes of the people!  Is it you who gave breath to man, that you dare take it from him?  Do you give growth to the plants of the earth, that you may waste them?  Do you toil to furrow the field?  Do you endure the ardor of the sun, and the torment of thirst, to reap the harvest or thrash the grain?  Do you, like the shepherd, watch through the dews of the night?  Do you traverse deserts, like the merchant?  Ah! on beholding the pride and cruelty of the powerful, I have been transported with indignation, and have said in my wrath, will there never then arise on the earth men who will avenge the people and punish tyrants?  A handful of brigands devour the multitude, and the multitude submits to be devoured!  Oh! degenerate people!  Know you not your rights?  All authority is from you, all power is yours.  Unlawfully do kings command you on the authority of God and of their