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026 - Book 5 Chapter 1 Inertia · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

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  Speaker 1: The French Revolution, A history by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
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  Speaker 1: Book five, the Third Estate, Chapter one, Inertia. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain read by Peter Dan
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  Speaker 1: Book five, Chapter one Inertia. That exasperated France, in this
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  Speaker 1: same national assembly of hers has got something, nay, something great, momentous, indispensable,
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  Speaker 1: cannot be doubted. Yet still the question were specially what
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  Speaker 1: a question hard to solve even for calm onlookers at
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  Speaker 1: this distance, wholly insoluble to act. As in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of it the States General, created and conflated by the
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  Speaker 1: passionate effort of the whole nation, is there is a
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  Speaker 1: thing high and lifted up hope jubilating cries aloud that
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  Speaker 1: it will prove a miraculous, brazen serpent in the wilderness,
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  Speaker 1: whereon whosoever looks with fate and obedience shall be healed
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  Speaker 1: of all woes and serpent bites. We may answer, it
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  Speaker 1: will at least prove a symbolic banner round which the exasperating,
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  Speaker 1: complaining twenty five millions, otherwise isolated and without power, may
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  Speaker 1: rally and work what it is them to work, If
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  Speaker 1: battle must be the work as one cannot help expecting,
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  Speaker 1: then shall it be a battle banner, say an Italian gonfalon,
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  Speaker 1: with its old Republican carroccio, and shall tower up carborn,
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  Speaker 1: shining in the wind, and with iron tongue peel forth
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  Speaker 1: many a signal, a thing of prime necessity, which, whether
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  Speaker 1: in the van or in the center, whether leading or
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  Speaker 1: lead and driven, must do the fighting multitude in calculable
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  Speaker 1: services for a season while it floats in the very front, nay,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, stands solitary there waiting whether force will
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  Speaker 1: gather round it. This same national carroccio and the signal
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  Speaker 1: peels it rings are a main object with us. The
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  Speaker 1: omen of the slouch hats clapped on shows the Commons
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  Speaker 1: deputies to have made up their minds on one thing,
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  Speaker 1: that neither no bless nor clergy shall have precedents of them.
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  Speaker 1: Hardly even majesty itself to such length as the contra
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  Speaker 1: social and force of public opinion carried us. For what
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  Speaker 1: is majesty but the delegate of the nation delegated and
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  Speaker 1: bargained with even rather tightly in some very singular posture
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  Speaker 1: of affairs which Jean Jacques has not fixed the date
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  Speaker 1: of coming therefore into their hall on the morrow, an
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  Speaker 1: inorganic mass of six hundred individuals. These commons deputies perceive
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  Speaker 1: without terror that they have it all to themselves. Their
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  Speaker 1: hall is also the grand or general hall for all
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  Speaker 1: the three orders. But the nobless and clergy, it would seem,
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  Speaker 1: have retired to their two separate apartments or halls, and
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  Speaker 1: are there verifying their powers, not in a conjoint but
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  Speaker 1: in a separate capacity. They are to continue two separate,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps separately voting orders. Then it is as if both
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  Speaker 1: noblesse and clergy had silently taken for granted that they
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  Speaker 1: already were such two orders against one, and so the
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  Speaker 1: third order to be left in a perpetual minority. Much
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  Speaker 1: may remain unfixed. But the negative of that is a
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  Speaker 1: thing fixed in the slouch hatted heads, in the French
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  Speaker 1: nation's head. Double representation, and all else hitherto gained were
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  Speaker 1: otherwise futile null. Doubtless, the powers must be verified, Doubtless
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  Speaker 1: the commission the electoral documents of your deputy must be
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  Speaker 1: inspected by his brother deputies and found valid. It is
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  Speaker 1: the preliminary of all. Neither is this question of doing
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  Speaker 1: it separately, or doing it conjointly a vital one. But
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  Speaker 1: if it lead to such, it must be resisted. Wise
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  Speaker 1: was that maxim resist the beginnings, Nay, were resistance unadvisable,
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  Speaker 1: even dangerous. Yet surely pause as very natural pause, with
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  Speaker 1: twenty five millions behind you may become resistance enough. The
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  Speaker 1: inorganic mass of Commons deputies will restrict itself to a
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  Speaker 1: system of inertia, and for the present remain inorganic. Such
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  Speaker 1: method recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the
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  Speaker 1: Common's deputies adopt, And not without adroitness, and with ever
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  Speaker 1: more tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week
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  Speaker 1: after week, for six weeks. Their history is of the
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  Speaker 1: kind named baron, which, indeed, as philosophy knows, is often
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  Speaker 1: the fruitfullest of all. These were their still creation days,
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  Speaker 1: wherein they sat incubating. In fact, what they did was
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  Speaker 1: to do nothing in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic
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  Speaker 1: body reassembles, threats that they cannot get organization, verification of
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  Speaker 1: powers in common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may
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  Speaker 1: be made, but let such be repressed. Inertia alone is
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  Speaker 1: at once unpunishable and unconquerable. Cunning must be met by cunning,
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  Speaker 1: proud pretension, by inertia, by a low tone of patriotic sorrow,
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  Speaker 1: low but incurable, unalterable, wise as serpents, harmless as doves.
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  Speaker 1: What a spectacle for France. Six hundred inorganic individuals, essential
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  Speaker 1: to its regeneration and salvation sit there on their elliptic benches,
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  Speaker 1: longing passionately towards life, in painful durance, like souls waiting
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  Speaker 1: to be borne. Speeches are spoken, eloquent, audible within doors
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  Speaker 1: and without mind, agitates itself against mind. The nation looks
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  Speaker 1: on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the commons deputies
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  Speaker 1: sit incubating. There are private conclaves, supper parties, consultations, Bretont Club,
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  Speaker 1: club of via Flay, germs of many clubs, wholly an
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  Speaker 1: element of confused noise, dimness, angry heat. Wherein, however, the
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  Speaker 1: eros egg kept at the fit temperature may have a
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  Speaker 1: safe unbroken till it be hatched in your mooniears ma
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  Speaker 1: luais le chapelliers in science sufficient for that fervor in
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  Speaker 1: your barnave's rabaul. At times shall come an inspiration from
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  Speaker 1: Royal Mirabeau. He is nowise yet recognized. As royal Nay,
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  Speaker 1: he was growned at when his name was first mentioned,
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  Speaker 1: but he is struggling towards recognition. In the course of
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  Speaker 1: the week, the Commons, having called their eldest to the
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  Speaker 1: chair and furnished him with the young, stronger, lunged assistants,
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  Speaker 1: can speak articulately and inaudible lamentable words declare as we
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  Speaker 1: said that they are an inorganic body longing to become organic.
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  Speaker 1: Letters arrive, but an inorganic body cannot open letters. They
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  Speaker 1: lie on the table unopened. The eldest may at most
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  Speaker 1: procure for himself some kind of list or muster roll
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  Speaker 1: to take the votes by and wait what will betide.
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  Speaker 1: No bless and clergy are all elsewhere. However, an eager
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  Speaker 1: public crowds all galleries and vacancies, which is some comfort
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  Speaker 1: with effort. It is determined not that a deputation shall
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  Speaker 1: be sent, for how can an inorganic body send deputations,
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  Speaker 1: but that certain individual Commons members shall, in an accidental way,
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  Speaker 1: stroll into the clergy chamber and then into the no
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  Speaker 1: blessed one, and mention there as a thing they have
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  Speaker 1: happened to observe. That the Commons seem to be sitting
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  Speaker 1: waiting for them in order to verify their powers, that
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  Speaker 1: is the wiser method. The clergy, among whom are such
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  Speaker 1: a multitude of undignified of mere commonmans in curates frocks,
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  Speaker 1: depute instant respectful answer that they are and will now
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  Speaker 1: more than ever be in deepest study as to that
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  Speaker 1: very matter. Contraririse. The nobless, in cavalier attitude, reply after
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  Speaker 1: four days, that they, for their part, are all verified
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  Speaker 1: and constituted which they had trusted. The commons also were
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  Speaker 1: such separate verification, being clearly the proper constitutional wisdom of
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  Speaker 1: ancestors method, as they the nobless will have much pleasure
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  Speaker 1: in demonstrating by a commission of their number, if the
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  Speaker 1: Commons will meet them commission against commission directly, in the
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  Speaker 1: rear of which comes a deputation of clergy reiterating in
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  Speaker 1: their insidious conciliatory way the same proposal. Here then is
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  Speaker 1: a complexity. What will wise commons say to this arily inertly?
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  Speaker 1: The wise commons, considering that they are, if not a
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  Speaker 1: French third estate, at least an aggregate of individuals pretending
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  Speaker 1: to some title of that kind, determine, after talking on
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  Speaker 1: it five days, to name such a Commission, though, as
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  Speaker 1: it were, with proviso not to be convinced. Are sixth
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  Speaker 1: days taken up in naming it, a seventh and an
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  Speaker 1: eighth day in getting the forms of meeting plays are,
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  Speaker 1: and the like settled, so that it is not till
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  Speaker 1: the evening of the twenty third of May that No
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  Speaker 1: Blessed Commission first meets Commons, Commission Clergy, acting as conciliators,
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  Speaker 1: and begins the impossible task of convincing it. One other
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  Speaker 1: meeting on the twenty fifth will suffice. The Commons are
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  Speaker 1: inconvincible the No Blessed Clergy, irrefragibly convincing the Commissions retire
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  Speaker 1: each order persisting in its first pretensions. Thus have three
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  Speaker 1: weeks passed. For three weeks the third estate, Carraccio, with
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  Speaker 1: far seeing Gonfaren has stood stocks still, flouting the wind,
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  Speaker 1: waiting what force would gather round it. Fancy can conceive
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  Speaker 1: the field of the court, and how counsel met council,
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  Speaker 1: the loud sounding inanity whirled in that distracted vortex where
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  Speaker 1: wisdom could not dwell. Your cunningly devised taxing machine has
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  Speaker 1: been got together, set up with incredible labor, and stands there.
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  Speaker 1: It's three pieces in contact. It's two flywheels of no
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  Speaker 1: bless and clergy, its huge working wheel of tierre Zetta.
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  Speaker 1: The two flywheels whirl in the softest manner, but prodigious
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  Speaker 1: to look upon. The huge working wheel hangs motionless, refuses
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  Speaker 1: to stir. The cunningest engineers are at fault. How will
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  Speaker 1: it work when it does? Begin? Fearfully, my friends, and
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  Speaker 1: to many purposes, but to gather taxes or grind court meal,
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  Speaker 1: one may apprehend, never could we but have continued gathering
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  Speaker 1: taxes by hand. Messeigneurs d'Artois conte conde named court triumvirate,
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  Speaker 1: They of the anti democratic memoir u WA has not
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  Speaker 1: thereforeboding proved true. They may wave, reproachfully their high heads,
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  Speaker 1: they may beat their poor brains. But the cunningest engineers
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  Speaker 1: can do nothing. Necka himself, will he even listen to
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  Speaker 1: begins to look blue? The only thing one sees advisable
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  Speaker 1: is to bring up soldiers. New regiments too, and a
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  Speaker 1: battalion of a third have already reached Paris. Others shall
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  Speaker 1: get in march. Good were it and all circumstances to
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  Speaker 1: have troops within reach. Good that the command were in
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  Speaker 1: sure hands. Let Brollier be appointed old martial Duke de Brugier,
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  Speaker 1: veteran disciplinarian of a firm drill sergeant. Morality such as
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  Speaker 1: may be depended on for alas neither are the clergy
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  Speaker 1: or the very no bless what they should be and
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  Speaker 1: might be when so menaced from without, entire undivided within.
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  Speaker 1: The noblesse indeed have their cataline or crisp and despremann
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  Speaker 1: il dusky, glowing all in renegade heat, their boisterous barrel mirabeau.
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  Speaker 1: But also they have their lafayette leancoor Limeths, above all
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  Speaker 1: their dor Leon, now cut forever from his court moorings,
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  Speaker 1: and amusing drowsily of high and highest sea prizes. For
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  Speaker 1: is not he too a son of Enricatra and partial
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  Speaker 1: potential heir apparent on his voyage towards chaos from the clergy. Again,
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  Speaker 1: so numerous are the cures. Actual deserters have run over
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  Speaker 1: two small parties in the second party Cure Gregoire. Neither
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  Speaker 1: is talk of a whole hundred and forty nine of
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  Speaker 1: them about to desert in mass, and only restrained by
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  Speaker 1: an Archbishop of Paris. It seems a losing game. But
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  Speaker 1: Judge of France, if Paris sat idle all this while
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  Speaker 1: addresses from far and near flow in, for our commons
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  Speaker 1: have now grown organic enough to open letters, or indeed
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  Speaker 1: to cavil at them. Thus, poor Marquis de Breze, Supreme
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  Speaker 1: usher master of ceremonies, or what if where his title
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  Speaker 1: was writing about this time on some ceremonial matter, sees
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  Speaker 1: no harm in winding up with a monsieur yours, with
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  Speaker 1: sincere attachment to whom does it address itself? This sincere
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  Speaker 1: attachment inquires Mirabeau to the Dean of the tiers Etta.
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  Speaker 1: There is no man in France entitled to write that
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  Speaker 1: rejoins he whereat the galleries in the world will not
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  Speaker 1: be kept from applauding poor de Breze. These commons have
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  Speaker 1: a still older grudge at him, nor has he yet
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  Speaker 1: done with them. In another way, Mirabeau has had to
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  Speaker 1: protest against the quick suppression of his newspaper Journal of
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  Speaker 1: the States General, and to continue it under a new name,
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  Speaker 1: in which act of valor. The Paris electors, still busy
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  Speaker 1: redacting their cair could not but support him by address
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  Speaker 1: to his majesty. They claim upmost provisory freedom of the press.
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  Speaker 1: They have spoken even about demolishing the bastille and erecting
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  Speaker 1: a bronze Patriot king on the site. These are the
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  Speaker 1: rich Burghers. But now consider how it went, for example,
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  Speaker 1: with such loose Marcellany, now all grown eleutheromaniac of loungers,
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  Speaker 1: prowl as social nondescripts, and the distilled rascality of our
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  Speaker 1: planet as whirls forever in the Palais Royal, or what
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  Speaker 1: low infinite groan first changing into a gral comes from
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  Speaker 1: San Antoine, and the twenty five millions in danger of starvation,
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  Speaker 1: there is the indisputablest scarcity of corn, be it aristocrat plot,
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  Speaker 1: dawy on plot of this year, or drout and hail
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  Speaker 1: of last year. In city and province, the poor man
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  Speaker 1: looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And this states general,
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  Speaker 1: that could make us an age of gold is forced
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  Speaker 1: to stand motionless, cannot get its powers verified. All industry
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  Speaker 1: necessarily languishes, if it be not that of making motions.
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  Speaker 1: In the Palais Royal, there has been erected, apparently by subscription,
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  Speaker 1: a kind of wooden tent on plush du bois most convenient,
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  Speaker 1: where select patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues with comfort.
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  Speaker 1: Let the weather be as it will lively is that
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  Speaker 1: Satan at home, on his table, on his chair. In
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  Speaker 1: every cafe stands a patriotic orator, a crowd round him
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  Speaker 1: within a crowd listening from without, open mouth, through open
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  Speaker 1: door and window, with thunders of applause for every sentiment
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  Speaker 1: of more than common hardiness. A Monsieur du Saint's pamphlet
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  Speaker 1: shop close by you cannot, without strong elbowing, get to
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  Speaker 1: the counter. Every hour produces its pamphlet or litter of pamphlets.
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  Speaker 1: There were thirteen to day, sixteen, yesterday, ninety two, last week.
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  Speaker 1: Think of tyranny and scarcity, fervid eloquence, rumor pamphleteering, society, publicale,
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  Speaker 1: Breton club, enraged club, and whether every tap room, coffee room,
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  Speaker 1: social reunion, accidental street group over wide France was not
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  Speaker 1: an enraged club, to all which the common deputies can
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  Speaker 1: only listen with a sublime inertia of sorrow, reduced to
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  Speaker 1: busy themselves with their internal police sure, a position no
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  Speaker 1: deputies ever occupied if they keep it with skill. Let
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  Speaker 1: not the temperature rise too high, break not the air
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  Speaker 1: us egg till it be hatched, till it break itself.
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  Speaker 1: An eager public crowds, all galleries and vacancies cannot be
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  Speaker 1: restrained from applauding the two privileged orders. The noblesse or
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  Speaker 1: verified and constituted may look on with what face they
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  Speaker 1: will not without a secret tremor of heart. The clergy,
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  Speaker 1: always acting the part of conciliators, make a clutch at
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  Speaker 1: the galleries and the popularity there, and miss it. Deputation
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  Speaker 1: of them arise with dolorous message about the dearth of grains,
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  Speaker 1: and the necessity there is of casting aside vain formalities
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  Speaker 1: and deliberating on this an insidious proposal, which, however, the
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  Speaker 1: Commons moved thereto by sea green Robes Pierre dexterously accept
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  Speaker 1: as a sort of hint or even pledge, that the
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  Speaker 1: clergy will forthwith come over to them, constitute the states general,
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  Speaker 1: and so cheapen grains. Finally, on the twenty seventh day
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  Speaker 1: of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come, proposes
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  Speaker 1: that the inertia cease, that, leaving the noblest to their
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  Speaker 1: own stiff ways, the clergy be summoned in the name
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  Speaker 1: of the God of Peace, to join the commons and
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  Speaker 1: begin to which summons if they turn a deaf ear
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  Speaker 1: or we shall see are not one hundred and forty
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  Speaker 1: nine of them ready to desert? O triumvirent of Prince's
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  Speaker 1: new God, des So Barranton, thou Home, Secretary Battoi, Duchess
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  Speaker 1: Polignac and Queen eager to listen what is now to
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  Speaker 1: be done? This third estate will get in motion the
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  Speaker 1: force of all France in it clergy machinery. If no
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  Speaker 1: blessed machinery, which work to serve as beautiful counterbalances and drags,
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  Speaker 1: will be shamefully dragged after it and take fire along
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  Speaker 1: with it. What is to be done? The Oi de
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  Speaker 1: bef waxes more confused than ever, whisper and counter whisper,
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  Speaker 1: a very tempest of whispers leading men from all the
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  Speaker 1: three orders are nightly spirited. Thither conjure as many of them.
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  Speaker 1: But can they conjure this Necker himself were now welcome,
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  Speaker 1: could he interfere to purpose? Let Necker interfere then, and
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  Speaker 1: in the King's name happily that incendiary God of Peace
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  Speaker 1: message is not yet answered. The three Orders shall again
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  Speaker 1: have conferences under this patriot minister of their somewhat may
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  Speaker 1: be healed clouted up. We meanwhile getting forward Swiss regiments
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  Speaker 1: and a hundred pieces of field artillery. This is what
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  Speaker 1: the Oi de Berth, for its part, resolves on. But
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  Speaker 1: as for Necca, alas poor neckar thy obstinate, third Estate
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  Speaker 1: has one first last word, verification in common as the
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  Speaker 1: pledge of voting and deliberating in common. Half way proposals
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  Speaker 1: from such a tried friend, they answer with a stare.
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  Speaker 1: The tardy conferences speedily break up. The Third Estate, now
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  Speaker 1: ready and resolute the whole world backing, it returns to
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  Speaker 1: its hall of the Three Orders, and Necker to the
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  Speaker 1: Eu de Boeuf, with the character of a disconjured conjurer,
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  Speaker 1: there fit only for dismissal. And so the Common's deputies
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  Speaker 1: are at last on their own strength, getting under wigh
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  Speaker 1: instead of chairman or Dean. They have now got a
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  Speaker 1: president astronomer by ye under way with a vengeance, with endless,
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  Speaker 1: vociferous and temperate eloquence, borne on newspaper wings to all lands.
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  Speaker 1: They have now, on the seventeenth day of June, determined
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  Speaker 1: that their name is not third estate, but National Assembly.
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  Speaker 1: They then are the nation triumvirent of Prince's queen refactory,
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  Speaker 1: no bless and clergy. What then are you a most
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  Speaker 1: deep question, scarcely answerable in living political dialects, all regardless
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  Speaker 1: of which our new National Assembly proceeds to appoint a
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  Speaker 1: committee of subsistence, dear to France, though it can find
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  Speaker 1: little or no grain. Next, as if our National Assembly
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  Speaker 1: stood quite firm on its legs, to appoint four other
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  Speaker 1: standing committees, then to settle the security of the national debt,
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  Speaker 1: then that of the annual taxation, or within eight and
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  Speaker 1: forty hours, at such a rate of velocity it is going,
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  Speaker 1: the conjurors of the ey de Boef may well ask
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  Speaker 1: themselves whither End of Book five, Chapter one,