this accord prove complete and permanent; all the worse for France
should it prove partial and temporary. It is a terrible risk, but
inevitable. There is no escape from anarchy except through despotism,
with the chance of encountering in one man, at first a savior and then a
destroyer, with the certainty of henceforth belonging to an unknown will
fashioned by genius and good sense, or by imagination and egoism, in
a soul fiery and disturbed by the temptations of absolute power, by
success and universal adulation, in a despot responsible to no one but
himself, in a conqueror condemned by the impulses of conquest to regard
himself and the world under a light growing falser and falser.

Such are the bitter fruits of social dissolution: the authority of the
state will either perish or become perverted; each uses it for his
own purposes, and nobody is disposed to entrust it to an external
arbitrator, and the usurpers who seize it only remain trustee on
condition that they abuse it; when it works in their hands it is only to
work against its office. It must be accepted when, for want of better or
fear of worse, through a final usurpation, it falls into the only hands
able to restore it, organize it, and apply it at last to the service of
the public.

*****

[Footnote 2101: "The Revolution," P.193 and following pages, also p.224
and following pages. The provisions of the constitution of the year
III, somewhat less anarchical, are analogous; those of the "Mountain"
constitution (year II) are so anarchical that nobody thought of
enforcing them.]

[Footnote 2102: "The Revolution," vol. III., pp.446, 450, 476.]

[Footnote 2103: Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution revolutionnaire dans
le departement du Doubs," X., 472 (Speech of Briot to the five-hundred,
Aug.29, 1799): "The country seeks in vain for its children; it finds the
chouans, the Jacobins, the moderates, and the constitutionalists of
'91 and '93, clubbists, the amnestied, fanatics, scissionists and
antiscissionists; in vain does it call for republicans."]

[Footnote 2104: "The Revolution," III., 427, 474.--Rocquain, "L'etat de
la France au 18 Brumaire," 360, 362: "Inertia or absence of the national
agents. .. It would be painful to think that a lack of salary was one of
the causes of the difficulty in establishing municipal administrations.
In 1790, 1791, and 1792, we found our fellow-citizens emulously striving
after these gratuitous offices and even proud of t