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III.
One idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king what they do
themselves. They fight. Whose the glory? The king's. They pay. Whose the
generosity? The king's. Then the people love him for being so rich. The
king receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a farthing. How
generous he is! The colossus which is the pedestal contemplates the
pigmy which is the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my back.
A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than a giant: it is to
perch himself on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it,
there is the wonder; and that he should admire the height of the dwarf,
there is the folly. Simplicity of mankind! The equestrian statue,
reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure of royalty: the horse
is the people. Only that the horse becomes transfigured by degrees. It
begins in an ass; it ends in a lion. Then it throws its rider, and you
have 1642 in England and 1789 in France; and sometimes it devours him,
and you have in England 1649, and in France 1793. That the lion should
relapse into the donkey is astonishing; but it is so. This was
occurring in England. It had resumed the pack-saddle, idolatry of the
crown. Queen Anne, as we have just observed, was popular. What was she
doing to be so? Nothing. Nothing!--that is all that is asked of the
sovereign of England. He receives for that nothing £1,250,000 a year. In
1
705, England which had had but thirteen men of war under Elizabeth, and
thirty-six under James I., counted a hundred and fifty in her fleet. The
English had three armies, 5,000 men in Catalonia; 10,000 in Portugal;
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