In reality, it is only the despairing cry of a group of
staff-officers without an army. Chosen under the electoral pressure
with which we are familiar, they possess rank, office and titles, but
no credit or influence; they are supported only by those whom they
really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of
the population, and forming a sectarian minority. Again, in this
minority there are a good many who are lukewarm; with most men the
distance is great between conviction and action; the interval is
filled up with acquired habits, indolence, fear and egoism. One's
belief in the abstractions of the "Contrat-social" is of little
account; no one readily bestirs oneself for an abstract end.
Uncertainties beset one at the outset; the road one has to follow is
found to be perilous and obscure, and one hesitates and postpones; one
feels himself a home-body and is afraid of engaging too deeply and of
going too far. Having expended one's breath in words one is less
willing to give one's money; another may open his purse but he may not
be disposed to give himself, which is as true of the Girondins as it
is of the Feuillants.
"At Marseilles,[59] at Bordeaux," says a deputy, "in nearly all the
principal towns, the proprietor, slow, indifferent and timid, could
not make up his mind to leave home for a moment; it was to mercenaries
that he entrusted his cause his arms.
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