rsities parading the streets
with their young France, and swearing, in an enthusiastic manner, not
without tumult. By a larger exercise of fancy, expand duly this little
word: The like was repeated in every Town and District of France! Nay
one Patriot Mother, in Lagnon of Brittany, assembles her ten children;
and, with her own aged hand, swears them all herself, the highsouled
venerable woman. Of all which, moreover, a National Assembly must be
eloquently apprised. Such three weeks of swearing! Saw the sun ever such
a swearing people? Have they been bit by a swearing tarantula? No: but
they are men and Frenchmen; they have Hope; and, singular to say, they
have Faith, were it only in the Gospel according to Jean Jacques. O my
Brothers! would to Heaven it were even as ye think and have sworn!
But there are Lovers' Oaths, which, had they been true as love itself,
cannot be kept; not to speak of Dicers' Oaths, also a known sort.

Chapter 2.1.VII.

Prodigies.

To such length had the Contrat Social brought it, in believing hearts.
Man, as is well said, lives by faith; each generation has its own
faith, more or less; and laughs at the faith of its predecessor,--most
unwisely. Grant indeed that this faith in the Social Contract belongs
to the stranger sorts; that an unborn generation may very wisely, if
not laugh, yet stare at it, and piously consider. For, alas, what is
Contrat? If all men were such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract would
bind them, all men were then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not
what thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of our
forces can make us perform to each other: that, in so sinful a world
as ours, is the thing to be counted on. But above all, a People and a
Sovereign promising to one another; as if a whole People, changing
from generation to generation, nay from hour to hour, could ever by any
method be made to speak or promise; and to speak mere solecisms: "We,
be the Heavens witness, which Heavens however do no miracles now; we,
ever-changing Millions, will allow thee, changeful Unit, to force us or
govern us!" The world has perhaps seen few faiths comparable to that.

So nevertheless had the world then construed the matter. Had they not so
construed it, how different had their hopes been, their attempts, their
results! But so and not otherwise did the Upper Powers will it to be.
Freedom by Social Contract: such was verily the Gospel of that Era. And
al