Neither have they left any principle by which any of their municipalities can be bound to obedience,—­or even conscientiously obliged not to separate from the whole, to become independent, or to connect itself with some other state.  The people of Lyons, it seems, have refused lately to pay taxes.  Why should they not?  What lawful authority is there left to exact them?  The king imposed some of them.  The old States, methodized by orders, settled the more ancient.  They may say to the Assembly,—­“Who are you, that are not our kings, nor the States we have elected, nor sit on the principles on which we have elected you?  And who are we, that, when we see the gabelles which you have ordered to be paid wholly shaken off, when we see the act of disobedience afterwards ratified by yourselves, who are we, that we are not to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to pay, and are not to avail ourselves of the same powers the validity of which you have approved in others?” To this the answer is, “We will send troops.”  The last reason of kings is always the first with your Assembly.  This military aid may serve for a time, whilst the impression of the increase of pay remains, and the vanity of being umpires in all disputes is flattered.  But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful to the hand that employs it.  The Assembly keep a school, where, systematically, and with unremitting perseverance, they teach principles and form regulations destructive to all spirit of subordination, civil and military,—­and then they expect that they shall hold in obedience an anarchic people by an anarchic army.

The municipal army, which, according to their new policy, is to balance this national army, if considered in itself only, is of a constitution much more simple, and in every respect less exceptionable.  It is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the crown or the kingdom, armed and trained and officered at the pleasure of the districts to which the corps severally belong; and the personal service of the individuals who compose, or the fine in lieu of personal service, are directed by the same authority.[130] Nothing is more uniform.  If, however, considered in any relation to the crown, to the National Assembly, to the public tribunals, or to the other army, or considered in a view to any coherence or connection between its parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly fail to terminate its perplexed movements in some great national calamity.  It is a worse preservative of a general constitution than the systasis of Crete, or the confederation of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which has yet been imagined, in the necessities produced by an ill-constructed system of government.

* * * * *

Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the supreme power, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on the reciprocal relation of all these establishments, I shall say something of the ability showed by your legislators with regard to the revenue.