the novel ideas of liberty back to their native land, where they
speedily produced a fermentation among their mercurial countrymen.

Louis XV., a voluptuous and extravagant monarch, was succeeded by
Louis XVI., a man of refined habits, pious and benevolent in
disposition, but unpossessed of the moral power requisite for the
extermination of the evils deeply rooted in the government. His queen,
Marie Antoinette, sister to Joseph II., little resembled her brother
or her husband in her tastes, was devoted to gaiety, and, by her
example, countenanced the most lavish extravagance. The evil increased
to a fearful degree. The taxes no longer sufficed; the exchequer was
robbed by privileged thieves; an enormous debt continued to increase;
and the king, almost reduced to the necessity of declaring the state
bankrupt, demanded aid from the nobility and clergy, who, hitherto
free from taxation, had amassed the whole wealth of the empire.

The aristocracy, ever blind to their true interest, refused to comply,
and, by so doing, compelled the king to have recourse to the
tiers-etat. Accordingly, A.D. 1789, he convoked a general assembly, in
which the deputies sent by the citizens and peasant classes were not
only numerically equal to those of the aristocracy, but were greatly
superior to them in talent and energy, and, on the refusal of the
nobility and clergy to comply with the just demands of the tiers-etat,
or even to hold a common sitting with their despised inferiors, these
deputies declared the national assembly to consist of themselves
alone, and proceeded, on their own responsibility, to scrutinize the
evils of the administration and to discuss remedial measures. The
whole nation applauded the manly and courageous conduct of its
representatives. The Parisians, ever in extremes, revolted, and
murdered the unpopular public officers; the soldiers, instead of