we have transplanted into their soil.  We have acted, we have spoken, like masters; and from that time we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers, who made the grimace of liberty for money, or slaves, who in their hearts cursed their new tyrants.  Our commissioners address them in this sort:  “You have nobles and priests among you:  drive them out without delay, or we will neither be your brethren nor your patrons.”  They answered:  “Give us but time; only leave to us the care of reforming these institutions.”  Our answer to them was:  “No! it must be at the moment, it must be on the spot; or we will treat you as enemies, we will abandon you to the resentment of the Austrians.”

What could the disarmed Belgians object to all this, surrounded as they were by seventy thousand men?  They had only to hold their tongues, and to bow down their heads before their masters.  They did hold their tongues, and their silence is received as a sincere and free assent.

Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to prevent that people from retreating, and to constrain them to an union?  It was foreseen, that, as long as they were unable to effect an union, the States would preserve the supreme authority amongst themselves.  Under pretence, therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in their right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties and taxes, they shut up all the treasuries.  From that time no more receipts, no more public money, no more means of paying the salaries of any man in office appointed by the States.  Thus was anarchy organized amongst the people, that they might be compelled to throw themselves into our arms.  It became necessary for those who administered their affairs, under the penalty of being exposed to sedition, and in order to avoid their throats being cut, to have recourse to the treasury of France.  What did they find in this treasury?  ASSIGNATS.—­These assignats were advanced at par to Belgium.  By this means, on the one hand, they naturalized this currency in that country, and on the other, they expected to make a good pecuniary transaction.  Thus it is that covetousness cut its throat with its own hands. The Belgians have seen in this forced introduction of assignats nothing but a double robbery; and they have only the more violently hated the union with France.

Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that subject.  With what earnestness did they conjure you to take off a retroactive effect from these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment of debts that were contracted anterior to the union!

Did not this language energetically enough signify that they looked upon the assignats as a leprosy, and the union as a deadly contagion?

And yet what regard was paid to so just a demand?  It was buried in the Committee of Finance.  That committee wanted to make anarchy the means of an union.  They only busied themselves in making the Belgic Provinces subservient to their finances.