it met.[23]

Though many of these precepts designed to guide the electors in their
choice of men are sagacious and admirable, they smack strongly of that
absolute and abstract spirit which can never become powerful in politics
without danger. It is certain that in the spring of '89, Condorcet held
hereditary monarchy to be most suitable to 'the wealth, the population,
the extent of France, and to the political system of Europe.'[24] Yet
the reasons which he gives for thinking this are not very cogent, and
he can hardly have felt them to be so. It is significant, however, of
the little distance which all the most uncompromising and most
thoughtful revolutionists saw in front of them, that even Condorcet
should, so late as the eve of the assembly of the States-General, have
talked about attachment to the forms of monarchy and respect for the
royal person and prerogative; and should have represented the notion of
the property of the Church undergoing any confiscation, as an invention
of the enemies of freedom.[25] Before the year was out, the property of
the Church had undergone confiscation; before two years had gone he was
an ardent Republican; and in less than twelve months after that he had
voted the guilt of the king.

It is worth while to cite here a still more pointed example of the want
of prevision, so common and so intelligible at that time. Writing in
July 1791, he confutes those who asserted that an established and
limited monarchy was a safeguard against a usurper, whose power is only
limited by his own audacity and address, by pointing out that the extent
of France, its divisions into departments, the separation between the
various branches of the administration, the freedom of the press, the
multitude of the public prints, were all so many insurmountable barriers
against a French Cromwell. 'To anybody who has read with attention the
history of the usurpation of Cromwell, it is clear that a single
newspaper would have been enough to stop his success. It is clear that
if the people of England had known how to read other books beside their
Bible, the hypocritical tyrant, unmasked from his first step, would soon
have ceased to be dangerous.' Again, is the nation to be cajoled by some
ambitious general, gratifying its desire to be an empire-race? 'Is this
what is asked by true friends of liberty, those who only seek that
reason and right should have empire over men? _What provinces, conquered
by a French genera