st, and the torch to
their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate
measures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all
conditions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found persons in
comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a
man of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in these clubs alone that the
public measures are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs,
which are set up in all the places of public resort. In these meetings
of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violent
and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and
compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance.
Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public.
Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is rendered
insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated
or meditated, they are forming plans for the good order of future
society. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and
promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they drive
hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsist
by beggary or by crime.

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of deliberation
with as little decency as liberty. They act like the comedians of a
fair, before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries of
a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, according
to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and
sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them,--domineering over them
with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuous
authority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is in
the place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows kings and
kingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave legislative
body,--_nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla senatus_. They have a
power given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert and
destroy,--but none to construct, except such machines as may be fitted
for further subversion and further destruction.

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to national
representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from
such a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacre