d by one-half. Towards the
end of 1792, at Besancon, scarcely more than 300 pure Jacobins are found
in a population of from 25,000 to 30,000, while at Paris, out of 700,000
inhabitants only 5,000 are Jacobins. It is certain that in the capital,
where the most excitement prevails, and where more of them are found
than elsewhere, never, even in a crisis and when vagabonds are paid and
bandits recruited, are there more than 10,000.[1244] In a large town
like Toulouse a representative of the people on missionary service wins
over only about 400 persons.[1245] Counting fifty or so in each small
town, twenty in each large borough, and five or six in each village, we
find, on an average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National
Guards, while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put
together do not amount to 300,000.[1246]--This is a small number for the
enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in
a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism
than that of an Asiatic sovereign. Force, however, is not measured
by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this
disorganized, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way
like an iron wedge splitting a log.

And against sedition from within as well as conquest from without a
nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government,
which provides the indispensable instruments of common action. Let
it fail or falter and the great majority, undecided about what to do,
lukewarm and busy elsewhere, ceases to be a corps and disintegrates into
dust. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied,
the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate on the ground where
it slowly crumbles away. Now its ghost, which returns, is still
more odious because it brings with it the same senseless abuses and
intolerable burdens, and, in addition to these, a yelping pack of
claimants and recriminators. After 1790 it appears on the frontier more
arbitrary than ever at the head of a coming invasion of angry emigres
and grasping foreigners.--The other government, that just constructed
by the Constituent Assembly, is so badly put together that the majority
cannot use it. It is not adapted to its hand; no political instrument at
once so ponderous and so helpless was ever seen. An enormous effort is
needed to set it in motion; every citizen is obliged to give it about
two days labor pe