and eating sumptuously. As for their debauchery and depravity, it is
perhaps unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless,
one has still partly a feeling with the lady Marechale: "Depend upon it,
Sir, God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality." (Dulaure,
vii. 261.) These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or they could
not have been there. Nay, one virtue they are still required to have
(for mortal man cannot live without a conscience): the virtue of perfect
readiness to fight duels.

Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with the
flock? With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and ever worse.
They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn. They are sent for,
to do statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes; to fatten battle-fields
(named 'Bed of honour') with their bodies, in quarrels which are not
theirs; their hand and toil is in every possession of man; but for
themselves they have little or no possession. Untaught, uncomforted,
unfed; to pine dully in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution
and obstruction: this is the lot of the millions; peuple taillable et
corveable a merci et misericorde. In Brittany they once rose in revolt
at the first introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it had something
to do with the Gabelle. Paris requires to be cleared out periodically
by the Police; and the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be sent
wandering again over space--for a time. 'During one such periodical
clearance,' says Lacretelle, 'in May, 1750, the Police had presumed
withal to carry off some reputable people's children, in the hope of
extorting ransoms for them. The mothers fill the public places
with cries of despair; crowds gather, get excited: so many women in
destraction run about exaggerating the alarm: an absurd and horrid fable
arises among the people; it is said that the doctors have ordered a
Great Person to take baths of young human blood for the restoration