During my
residence in Austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very
moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he
called out, on his way to execution that it was not he who had
robbed, but the state. And, in truth, it is impossible to make the
common people comprehend that it is just to punish them for having
speculated in their own affairs, in the same way as the government
had done in its own. But this government was the ally of the French
government, and doubly its ally, as its monarch was the very patient
father-in-law of a very terrible son-inlaw. What resources therefore
could remain to him? The marriage of his daughter had been the means
of liberating him from two millions of contributions-at most; the
rest had been required with the kind of justice of which the other
is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and
his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury.
Another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially
from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had
illustrated the Austrian arms in the battles of Essling and Wagram,
had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had
formerly been very strong. The same thing has happened to all the
sovereigns who have treated with the emperor Napoleon; he has made
use of them as receivers to levy imposts on his account; he has
forced them to squeeze their subjects to pay him the taxes he
demanded; and when it has suited him to dethrone these sovereigns,
the people, previously alienated from them by the very wrongs they
had committed in obedience to the emperor, have not raised an arm to
defend them against him.
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