and common to all politicians, of
placing themselves beyond mankind, to arrange, organise, and regulate
it, according to their fancy.

For whilst society is struggling to realise liberty, the great men who
place themselves at its head, imbued with the principles of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, think only of subjecting it to the
philanthropic despotism of their social inventions, and making it bear
with docility, according to the expression of Rousseau, the yoke of
public felicity, as pictured in their own imaginations.

This was particularly the case in 1789. No sooner was the old system
destroyed, than society was to be submitted to other artificial
arrangements, always with the same starting-point--the omnipotence of
the law.

_Saint Just_.--"The legislator commands the future. It is for him
to _will_ for the good of mankind. It is for him to make men what
he wishes them to be."

_Robespierre_.--"The function of Government is to direct the
physical and moral powers of the nation towards the object of its
institution."

_Billaud Varennes_.--"A people who are to be restored to liberty
must be formed anew. Ancient prejudices must be destroyed,
antiquated customs changed, depraved affections corrected,
inveterate vices eradicated. For this, a strong force and a
vehement impulse will be necessary.... Citizens, the inflexible
austerity of Lycurgus created the firm basis of the Spartan
republic. The feeble and trusting disposition of Solon plunged
Athens into slavery. This parallel contains the whole science of
Government."

_Lepelletier._--"Considering the extent of human degradation, I am
convinced of the necessity of effecting an entire regeneration of
the race, and, if I may so express myself, of creating a new
people."

Men, therefore, are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to
_will their own improvement_. They are not capable of it; according to
Saint Just, it is only the legislator who is. Men are merely to be what
he _wills_ that they should be. According to Robespierre, who copies
Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning the aim of
the _institutions of the nation_. After this, the Government has only to
direct all its _physical_ and _moral forces_ towards this end. All this
time the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive; and Billaud
Varennes would teach us that it