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 lance--Soldiers be still; if God supports
the Sultan he needs not your aid; if his sword suffices, he needs not
yours; let us see what he can do alone. The soldiers grounded their
arms; and behold these masters of the world, feeble as the meanest of