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 draft 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 resolution, that no two of their
republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris, thus
formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted that the
geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be
sunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons,
Normans; but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly.
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