France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed
without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the
multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits. What now stands as
government in France is struck out at a heat. The design is wicked,
immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it is
systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has unity and consistency
in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of
commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of agriculture, even to
burn a city or to lay waste a province of their own, does not cost them
a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the want, the liberty,
the toil, the blood of individuals, is as nothing. Individuality is left
out of their scheme of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is
trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its
maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The state has dominion
and conquest for its sole objects,--dominion over minds by proselytism,
over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are
lessened in their amount only to be increased in their effect, France
has, since the accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity in its
direction.
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