Walter: The French could hardly be slandered and defamed worse than many of their own writers have been doing for several years now! Just look at the horrifying picture one of these gentlemen paints in eight lines of the moral corruption of their capital! 

"Vice and moral corruption are carried so far that timid youth dare not show themselves without being ridiculed. It is almost impossible for reckless, unbridled fantasy to add anything more to the present corruption. The utmost licentiousness can hardly go a step further among citizens of the highest as well as the lowest rank."

And yet it is precisely this extremely corrupt nation that has, for several months now, amazed all of Europe through expressions of patriotism, wisdom, courage, and steadfastness that are unprecedented in history!

Christoph Martin Wieland wrote this dialogue in August 1789, weeks after the fall of the Bastille. It is one of the earliest German responses to the French Revolution by a major Enlightenment thinker. 

Christoph Martin Wieland
THE LEGITIMACY OF REVOLUTION
(A Dialogue on the Legitimacy of the Use That the French Nation Is Currently Making of Its Enlightenment and Strength)

ISBN: 978-3565030644