top
to bottom. All willing men are asked to come and help, and, as one
plain principle suffices in drawing a plan, the first comer may succeed.
Henceforth political fancies swarm in the district meetings, in
the clubs, in the newspapers, in pamphlets, and in every head-long,
venturesome brain.

"There is not a merchant's clerk educated by reading the 'Nouvelle
Heloise,'[1111] not a school teacher that has translated ten pages of
Livy, not an artist that has leafed through Rollin, not an aesthete
converted into journalists by committing to memory the riddles of the
'Contrat Social,' who does not draft a constitution... As nothing is
easier than to perfect a daydream, all perturbed minds gather, and
become excited, in this ideal realm. They start out with curiosity and
end up with enthusiasm. The man in the street rushes to the enterprise
in the same manner as a miser to a conjurer promising treasures, and,
thus childishly attracted, each hopes to find at once, what has never
been seen under even the most liberal governments: perpetual perfection,
universal brotherhood, the power of acquiring what one lacks, and a life
composed wholly of enjoyment."

One of these pleasures, and a keen one, is to daydream. One soars in
space. By means of eight or ten ready-made sentences, found in the
six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the
suburbs of the towns and cities,[1112] a village attorney, a customs
clerk, a theater attendant, a sergeant of a soldier's mess, becomes
a legislator and philosopher. He criticizes Malouet, Mirabeau, the
Ministry, the King, the Assembly, the Church, foreign Cabinets, France,
and all Europe. Consequently, on these important subjects, which always
seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions, reads addresses,
makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates himself on having
argued so well and with such big words. To hold fort on questions that
are not understood is now an occupation, a matter of pride and profit.

"More is uttered in one day," says an eye-witness,[1113] "in one section
of Paris than in one year in all the Swiss political assemblies put
together. An Englishman would give six weeks of study to what we dispose
of in a quarter of an hour."

Everywhere, in the town halls, in popular meetings, in the sectional
assemblies, in the wine shops, on the public promenades, on street
corners vanity erects a tribune of verbosity.

"Contemplate the inca