Historical voices

If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can determine between you.

Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes! by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church, or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker?

Man worships not himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is not for the service of himself, but of his God.

Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it.

The French Constitution hath abolished or renounced Toleration and Intolerance also, and hath established Universal Right Of Conscience.

It is a case that applies itself to every man's sense of justice, and is one among many that calls aloud for a constitution.

The greatest characters the world have known have arisen on the democratic floor.

It defeats even its pretended end, and becomes in time the opposite of what is noble in man.

Because aristocracy has a tendency to deteriorate the human species.

Because it is continuing the uncivilised principle of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having property in man, and governing him by personal right.

Because a body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody.

Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate.

Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source.

To restore, therefore, parents to their children, and children to their parents relations to each other, and man to society--and to exterminate the monster aristocracy, root and branch--the French Constitution has destroyed the law of…

They are the flesh and blood of their parents in the one line, and nothing akin to them in the other.

By nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans.

Unnecessary offices and places in governments and courts are created at the expense of the public to maintain them.

All the children which the aristocracy disowns (which are all except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans on a parish, to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge.

They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast.

By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children five are exposed.

It is the law against every other law of nature, and Nature herself calls for its destruction.

That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest.

It must now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar, and made of them a burnt-offering to Reason.

The patriots of France have discovered in good time that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground.