With acknowledgement that @lori4242 has already given the relevant Anatole France quote, here it is again in French, complete with diacritical marks.
La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
The quote is from Le Lys Rouge (The Red Lily, an 1894 novel by France.) The passage in the novel is spoken by the character Mr Chouette, an anarchist. He is decrying the militarization of French society which he holds Louis XIV responsible for initiating.
Here is some more context, with the quote in boldface. There is another juicy passage at the end, which I’ve put in italics.
Choulette wanted to express human misery, not simple and touching, as the men of yesteryear had felt it, in a world mixed with harshness and kindness, but hideous and painted, in this state of perfect ugliness where carried by the free-thinking bourgeois and the patriotic soldiers, resulting from the French Revolution. According to him, the current regime was nothing but hypocrisy and brutality. Militarism horrified him.
— The barracks are a hideous invention of modern times. It only dates back to the 17th century . Before, we only had the good guardhouse where the soldiers played cards andtales of Merlusine. Louis XIV is a precursor of the Convention and of Bonaparte. But evil has reached its full extent since the monstrous institution of service for all. To have made it an obligation for men to kill is the shame of emperors and republics, the crime of crimes. In the so-called barbaric ages, cities and princes entrusted their defense to mercenaries who waged war as wise and prudent people; sometimes there were only five or six dead in a big battle. And when the knights went to war, at least they were not forced to do so; they were killed for their pleasure. No doubt they were only good for that. No one, in the time of Saint Louis, would have had the idea of sending a man of knowledge and understanding into battle. Nor were the plowman torn from the soil to be taken to the army. Now, a poor peasant is made a duty to be a soldier. He is exiled from the house whose roof smokes in the golden silence of the evening, from the lush meadows where the oxen graze, from the fields, from the paternal woods; he is taught, in the courtyard of an ugly barracks, to regularly kill men; they threaten him, they insult him, they put him in prison; they tell him that it is an honor, and if he does not want to honor himself in this way, they shoot him. He obeys because heis subject to fear and of all domestic animals the sweetest, the most laughing and the most docile. We are soldiers, in France, and we are citizens. Another reason for pride, than being a citizen! This consists of the poor supporting and preserving the rich in their power and their idleness. They must work there in front of the majestic equality of laws, which prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing bread. This is one of the benefits of the Revolution. As this revolution was carried out by madmen and imbeciles for the benefit of the purchasers of national property and which ultimately only resulted in the enrichment of madré peasants and bourgeois usurers, it rose, under the name of equality, the empire of wealth. She delivered France to the men of money, who for a hundred years have devoured it. They are masters and lords there. The apparent government, made up of pitiful, shabby, stodgy and disastrous poor devils, is in the pay of the financiers. For a hundred years, in this poisoned country, anyone who loves the poor has been considered a traitor to society. And one is a dangerous man when one says that he is miserable. We even made laws against indignation and pity. And what I say here could not be printed.
