Whatever the social
instrumentality may be - judiciary, administration, credit, commerce,
manufactures, agriculture - they can dislocate and destroy it with
impunity. - They never fail to do this, and, moreover, in their
dispatches, they take credit to themselves for the ruin they cause.
That, indeed, is their mission; otherwise, they would be regarded as
bad Jacobins; they would soon become "suspects;" they rule only on
condition of being infatuated and destructive; the overthrow of
common-sense is with them an act of State grace, a necessity of the
office, and, on this common ground of compulsory unreason, every
species of physical delirium may be set established.
With those that we can follow closely, not only is their judgment
perverted, but the entire nervous apparatus is affected; a permanent
over-excitement and a morbid restlessness has begun. - Consider
Joseph Lebon, son of a sergeant-at-arms, subsequently, a teacher with
the Oratoriens of Beaune, next, cur? of Neuville-Vitasse, repudiated
as an interloper by the ?lite of his parishioners, not respected,
without house or furniture, and almost without a flock.[116] Two
years after this, finding himself sovereign of his province, his head
is spinning.
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