[Footnote 12: This proposal was not carried into execution.]
But the government party should not have attempted to assist the emigrants by resorting to means offensive to the nation, and derogatory to the charter. And, above all, they should not have puffed up the emigrants with proud and silly hopes. If they had been left to themselves, they would have fallen in with the purchasers of their property, they would have treated for an amicable settlement of their claims, and they would have regained possession of their hereditary estates without jarring and without scandal.
The partiality which was shown towards the emigrants on all occasions produced another evil of still greater extent. It contributed, even more than the efforts of disaffection, in persuading the peasantry that the government wished to chain them again to the soil, and to render them once more the tributaries both of the nobility and of the priesthood.
The revolution has taught the countryman to know that he is somebody in the state. After the revolution the peasants became rich, and they were delivered from the double vassalage of former days, when they crouched before the priest and the lord: therefore they could not think of any alteration without horror. Day after day they heard or they read (in France every body reads now,) that the government intended to restore the "_ancien régime_." And the restoration of the "_ancien régime_" was interpreted by them, as well as by many others, to mean the restoration of tithes, vassalage, and feudal rights. They were confirmed in their dangerous and disquieting opinion by the outrageous claims of the emigrants, and the declamations of the priests. It was to no purpose that the government tried to re-assure them. They had been already deceived and it seldom happens that you can catch a French peasant twice in the same snare. The abolition of the conscription had been promised, and the old code was continued in force with all its harshness, and still the refractory conscripts were sent away in chains, whilst fines were imposed upon their families. The abolition of the "_droits réunis_" had also been promised, and they were not only levied with greater rigour and harshness than before, but even some of these imposts had been greatly increased.