Pare o descrie a zilei de azi.
The political condition of France at that time presents nothing but a confused mass of privileges altogether contravening thought and reason – an utterly irrational state of things, and one with which the greatest corruption of morals, of spirit was associated – an empire characterized by destitution of right, and which, when its real state begins to be recognized, becomes shameless destitution of right. The fearfully heavy burdens that pressed upon the people, the embarrassment of the government to procure for the court the means of supporting luxury and extravagance, gave the first impulse to discontent. The new spirit began to agitate men’s minds: oppression drove men to investigation. It was perceived that the sums extorted from the people were not expended in furthering the objects of the State, but were lavished in the most unreasonable fashion. The entire political system appeared one mass of injustice. The change was necessarily violent, because the work of transformation was not undertaken by the government. And the reason why the government did not undertake it was that the court, the clergy, the nobility, the parliaments themselves, were unwilling to surrender the privileges they possessed, either for the sake of expediency or that of abstract right; moreover, because the government as the concrete centre of the power of the State, could not adopt as its principle abstract individual wills, and reconstruct the State on this basis; lastly, because it was Catholic, and therefore the idea of freedom – reason embodied in laws – did not pass for the final absolute obligation, since the holy and the religious conscience are separated from them. The conception, the idea of right asserted its authority all at once, and the old framework of injustice could offer no resistance to its onslaught.