How fast time flies! It already has been two years since I was sent to France by American Congress.
Since May of 1785, I am working as a Minister Plenipotentiary.
I am currently living in Hotel de Langeac, located at the corner of the Rue de Berri and the Champs-Elysees. It suits me in every circumstance but the price; I have to pay 7,500 livres a year.
Since I arrived in France, I have been learning and experiencing elegant culture of France.
I am genuinely enjoying French architecture, sculpture, painting, music, plays, and book stores. I am living a life I dreamt when I was studying European cultures and classical works in my youth.
Although I greatly admire France, I am very sorry for bourgeois and peasants. When I traveled the countryside I met so many peasants who were struggling with their daily lives. They had no time or hope whatsoever to enjoy their own culture. They had to work every single day, and pay numerous kinds of taxes and dues to local nobilities and the church. Obviously, they end up being extremely poor, that they cannot afford enough bread.
Nobilities and clergies, on the other hand, do not work as much, but collect taxes from lower class, and pay nothing to government.
As a person who values life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for every individual in the world, I find this situation very disturbing.
While I see a fascinating side of France, I also see pain of France and people's desire to change this situation. I sometimes see pamphletes about Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and myself, referred as “friends of liberty”. I am proud and grateful that what America went through is motivating Frenes for their equality and liberty.
No comments:
Post a Comment