ination, in
which no comfort or compensation is to be found in any even of those
false splendors which, playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind
from feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are oppressed. I
must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, at
the conduct of a few men, once of great rank, and still of great
character, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a business
too deep for the line of their understanding to fathom,--who have lent
their fair reputation and the authority of their high-sounding names to
the designs of men with whom they could not be acquainted, and have
thereby made their very virtues operate to the ruin of their country.

So far as to the first cementing principle.

The second material of cement for their new republic is the superiority
of the city of Paris; and this, I admit, is strongly connected with the
other cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation. It is
in this part of the project we must look for the cause of the
destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions,
ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all ancient
combinations of things, as well as the formation of so many small
unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one
great spring of all their politics. It is through the power of Paris,
now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of this
faction direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and the whole
executive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which can
confirm the authority of that city over the other republics. Paris is
compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the
force of any of the square republics; and this strength is collected and
condensed within a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by any scheme of a
geometrical constitution; nor does it much signify whether its
proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole
draught of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the kingdom,
being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual
means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least,
confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate
members, but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm this
part of the plan, the Assembly has lately come to a res