At present, these guarantees are not so.

They have concentrated at the capital all who subsist upon them, and surrounded the Sovereign and his Court with an overgrown aristocracy, which tends to alienate him more and more from his people.

The people derive no benefit from, and have no feeling or interest in common with, this city aristocracy, which tends more and more to hide their Sovereign from their view, and to render him less and less sensible of his duties and high responsibilities; and what would be a blessing under a good, becomes an evil under a bad system, such as that which has prevailed since those guarantees began.
In this overgrown city there is a perpetual turmoil of processions, illuminations, and festivities.

The Sovereign spends all that he can get in them, and has not the slightest wish to perpetuate his name by the construction of any useful or ornamental work beyond its suburbs.
All the members of his family and of the city aristocracy follow his example, and spend their means in the same way.

Indifferent to the feelings and opinions of the landed aristocracy and people of the country, with whom they have no sympathy, they spend all that they can spare for the public in gratifying the vitiated tastes of the overgrown metropolis.