Note 590 — Part II—The Worldlings (continued 4)

"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.... Strange chaos of levity and ferocity,... monstrous tragicomic scene.... After I have read the list of the persons and descriptions elected into the Tiers-État, nothing which they afterwards did could appear astonishing.... Of any practical experience in the state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. The majority was composed of practitioners in the law,... active chicaners,... obscure provincial advocates, stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, etc."—Ibid. V. 37 and 90. That which offends Burke, and even makes him very uneasy, was, that no representatives of the "natural landed interests" were among the representatives of the Tiers-État. Let us give one quotation more, for really this political clairvoyance is akin to genius: "Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."