I thought that the State ought not in justice to have seized any part of the property of the Church, till it had reverted, as it were, to the community, by the death of its immediate possessors.

I thought that the king was not only treated with unmerited indignity, but that too little authority was left him to enable him, as the chief executive magistrate, to be useful to the State.

These were some of my reasons for not approving the means by which the first revolution in France was brought about.

As to other evils which took place on the occasion, I considered them certainly as evils of importance; but at the same time as evils inseparable from a state of civil commotion, and which I conceived would be more than compensated by the establishment of a limited monarchy.
The French have abandoned the constitution they had at first established, and have changed it for another.

No one can reprobate with more truth than I do both the means and the end of this change.