The small body of national troops, which has been judged necessary in
time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid, infected with local
prejudices, and supported by irregular and disproportionate
contributions to the treasury.
The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice among
these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing the empire
into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an interior
organization, and of charging them with the military execution of the
laws against delinquent and contumacious members. This experiment has
only served to demonstrate more fully the radical vice of the
constitution. Each circle is the miniature picture of the deformities of
this political monster. They either fail to execute their commissions,
or they do it with all the devastation and carnage of civil war.
Sometimes whole circles are defaulters; and then they increase the
mischief which they were instituted to remedy.
We may form some judgment of this scheme of military coercion from a
sample given by Thuanus. In Donawerth, a free and imperial city of the
circle of Suabia, the Abbe de St.
Pages:
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198