Historical voices

The world has seen this folly fall, and it has fallen by being laughed at, and the farce of titles will follow its fate.

There was a time when the lowest class of what are called nobility was more thought of than the highest is now, and when a man in armour riding throughout Christendom in quest of adventures was more stared at than a modern Duke.

This species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise.

There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them.

It is common opinion only that makes them anything, or nothing, or worse than nothing.

If a whole country is disposed to hold them in contempt, all their value is gone, and none will own them.

Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript.

What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing, and which means nothing?

Whether they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or the rider or the horse, is all equivocal.

Through all the vocabulary of Adam there is not such an animal as a Duke or a Count; neither can we connect any certain ideas with the words.

He lives immured within the Bastille of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man.

Titles are like circles drawn by the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity.

The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him from it.

Even those who possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets, have despised the rattle.

The punyism of a senseless word like Duke, Count or Earl has ceased to please.

It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France that the folly of titles has fallen.

It reduces man into the diminutive of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things which are little.

Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.

The French Constitution places the right where the expense must fall, and this union can only be in the nation.

The one forces the nation to a combat, and the other ties its hands; but the more probable issue is that the contest will end in a collusion between the parties, and be made a screen to both.

The French Constitution, therefore, to provide against both these evils, has taken away the power of declaring war from kings and ministers, and placed the right where the expense must fall.

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on…

It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure.

War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries.