Adolphe Thiers
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 278
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... wavering conduct of the King. The moderates, alarmed by divisions, hoped that the common danger would put an end to them, and that the fields cciving that changes in the constitution, that violation of the equality which is the basis of it, were the sole aim of the enemies of France; that they wished to punish her for having recognised in their full extent the rights common to all mankind; and then it took that oath, repeated by all Frenchmen, to perish rather than suffer the slightest attack either upon the liberty of the citizens, or upon the sovereignty of the people; or, above all, upon that equality without which there exists for societies neither justice nor happiness. Would they reproach the French with not having sufficiently respected the rights of other nations, in offering only pecuniary indemnities either to the German princes holding possessions in Alsace, or to the Pope ? Treaties had acknowledged the sovereignty of France over Alsace, and it had been peaceably exercised there for upwards of a century. The rights which these treaties had reserved were but privileges; the meaning of this reserve therefore was, that the possessors of fiefs in Alsace should retain them, with their old prerogatives, so long as the general lawa of'France admitted of the different forms of feudalism; that reserve signified also that, if the feudal prerogatives were involved in one general ruin, the nation ought to indemnify the possessors for the real advantages resulting from it: for this is all that the right of property can demand, when it happens to be in opposition to the law, in contradiction to the publio interest. The citizens of Alsace are Frenchmen, and the nation cannot without disgrace and without injustice suffer them to be deprived...