Historical voices

In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin.

That may be; but it is Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to trust to duty.

A state of contempt is not a state for a prince: better get rid of him at once.

The elevation of mind to be derived from fear will never make a nation glorious.

A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by his misfortunes, so as to think it not the necessity, but the premium and privilege of life, to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory, can never be fit for the office.

If you expect such obedience, amongst your other innovations and regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in Nature, and provide a new constitution, for the human mind: otherwise your supreme government cannot harmonize with its…

I think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigor into measures which he knows to be dictated by those who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree ill affected to…

Kings, even such as are truly kings, may and ought to bear the freedom of subjects that are obnoxious to them.

A purposed neglect, or, what is worse, a literal, but perverse and malignant obedience, must be the ruin of the wisest counsels.

Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in such a manner that those who compose it should be disposed to love and to venerate those whom they are bound to obey.

Those who serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive but fear,--by a fear of everything except their master.

All rewards, all distinctions, are in other hands.

In France the king is no more the fountain of honor than he is the fountain of justice.

What sort of person is a king to command executory service, who has no means whatsoever to reward it:--not in a permanent office; not in a grant of land; no, not in a pension of fifty pounds a year; not in the vainest and most trivial…

It ought to be environed with dignity, authority, and consideration, and it ought to lead to glory.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king.

It is not in Nature, that, situated as the king of the French now is, he can respect himself or can be respected by others.

It was not for nothing that the Assembly has been at such pains to remove the stigma from certain offices, when they were resolved to place the person who had lately been their king in a situation but one degree above the executioner, and…

Everything in justice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him.

It is impossible to place anything called royalty in a more degrading point of view.

When we look into the true nature of his authority, he appears to be nothing more than a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles, jailers, and hangmen.

The king of France is not the fountain of justice.

Of this there are no traces in your Constitution; and in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered a sovereign incapacity.

They will be roused by emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd.