All powerful passions are on its side, not merely the irritation of the
people tormented by misery and suspicion, not merely the ambition and
self-esteem of the bourgeois, in revolt against the ancient regime,
but also the inveterate bitterness and fixed ideas of so many suffering
minds and so many factious intellects, Protestants, Jansenists,
economists, philosophers, men who, like Freteau, Rabout-Saint-Etienne,
Volney, Sieyes, are hatching out a long arrears of resentments or hopes,
and who only await the opportunity to impose their system with all the
intolerance of dogmatism and of faith. To minds of this stamp the past
is a dead letter; example is no authority; realities are of no account;
they live in their own Utopia. Sieyes, the most important of them all,
judges that "the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed
for imposing on the people;"[2132] he regards the English "as children
in the matter of a constitution," and thinks that he is capable of
giving France a much better one. Dumont, who sees the first committees
at the houses of Brissot and Clavieres, goes away with as much anxiety
as "disgust."

"It is impossible," he says, "to depict the confusion of ideas, the
license of the imagination, the burlesque of popular notions. One
would think that they saw before them the world on the day after the
Creation."

They seem to think, indeed, that human society does not exist, and that
they are appointed to create it. Just as well might ambassadors "of
hostile tribes, and of diverse interests, set themselves to arrange
their common lot as if nothing had previously existed." There is no
hesitation. They are satisfied that the thing can be easily done, and
that, with two or three axioms of political philosophy, the first man
that comes may make himself master of it. Immoderate conceit of this
kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of
novices it is a strength. A flock which has lost its way follows those
who appears to forge ahead; they are the most irrational but they
are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the
daredevils who become leaders.

III.--The Power Of Simple, General Ideas.

Ascendancy of the revolutionary party--Theory in its favor--
The constraint thus imposed on men's minds--Appeal to the
passions--Brute force on the side of the party--It profits
by this--Oppression of the minority.

Two advantages gi