-- It is not a
difficult job; the phrases are ready-made to hand. "Let the plotters
of anti-popular systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate
their projects! Frenchmen . . . . have only to consult their
hearts to read the Republic there!"[7] Drafted in accordance with the
"Contrat-Social," filled with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a
summary "in pithy style" of the manual of current aphorisms then in
vogue, Rousseau's mathematical formulas and prescriptions, "the axioms
of truth and the consequences flowing from these axioms," in short, a
rectilinear constitution which any school-boy may spout on leaving
college. Like a handbill posted on the door of a new shop, it
promises to customers every imaginable article that is handsome and
desirable. Would you have rights and liberties? You will find them
all here. Never has the statement been so clearly made, that the
government is the servant, creature and tool of the governed; it is
instituted solely "to guarantee to them their natural, imprescriptible
rights." [8] Never has a mandate been more strictly limited: "The
right of expressing one's thoughts and opinions, either through the
press or in any other way; the right of peaceful assembly, the free
exercise of worship, cannot be interdicted.
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