hose of the government; to-morrow he is to exaggerate
the rights of the people in power, even to suppressing those who are
governed. The people, as he puts it, is the sole sovereign, and he is
going to treat the people as slaves; the government, as he puts it, is
a valet, and he is going to endow the government with prerogatives of a
sultan. He has just denounced the slightest exercise of public
authority as a crime; he is now going to punish as a crime the slightest
resistance to public authority. What will justify such a volte-face and
with what excuse can he repudiate the principles with which he justified
his takeover?--He takes good care not to repudiate them; it would
drive the already rebellious provinces to extremes; on the contrary,
he proclaims them with renewed vigor, through which move the ignorant
crowd, seeing the same flask always presented to it, imagines that it is
always served with the same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny
under the label of freedom. Whatever the charlatan can do with his
labels, signboards, shouting and lies for the next six months, will be
done to disguise the new nostrum; so much the worse for the public if,
later on, it discovers that the draught is bitter; sooner or later it
must swallow it, willingly or by compulsion: for, in the interval,
the instruments are being got ready to force it down the public
throat.[1103]

As a beginning, the Constitution, so long anticipated and so often
promised, is hastily fabricated:[1104] declarations of rights in
thirty-five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and
twenty-four articles, political principles and institutions of every
sort, electoral, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial,
financial and military;[1105] in three weeks all is drawn up and passed
on the double.--Of course, the new Constitutionalists do not propose to
produce an effective and serviceable instrument; that is the least of
their worries. Herault Sechelles, the reporter of the bill, writes on
the 7th of June, "to have procured for him at once the laws of Minos,
of which he has urgent need;" very urgent need, as he must hand in
the Constitution that week.[1106] Such circumstance is sufficiently
characteristic of both the workmen and the work. All is mere show and
pretense. Some of the workmen are shrewd politicians whose sole object
is to furnish the public with words instead of realities; others,
ordinary scribblers of abstractions, or ev