- Undoubtedly, in any invaded province which thus passes
from an old to a new despotism, fine words cleverly spoken produce at
first the intended effect. But, in a few weeks or months, the
ransomed, enlisted and forcibly "Frenchified" inhabitants, discover
that the revolutionary right is much more oppressive, more harassing
and more rapacious than divine right.
It is the right of the strongest. The reigning Jacobins know no
other, abroad as well as at home, and, in the use they make of it,
they are not restrained like ordinary statesmen, by a thorough
comprehension of the interests of the State, by experience and
tradition, by far-reaching plans, by an estimate of present and future
strength. Being a sect, they subordinate France to their dogmas, and,
with the narrow views, pride and arrogance of the sectary, they
profess the same intolerance, the same need of domination and his
instincts for propagandas and invasion. - This belligerent and
tyrannical spirit they had already displayed under the Legislative
Assembly, and they are intoxicated with it under the Convention.
After Thermidor,[108] and after Vend?miaire, they remained the same;
they became rigid against "the faction of old boundaries," and against
any moderate policy; at first, against the pacific minority, then
against the pacific majority, against the entreaties of all France,
against their own military director, "the organizer of victory "
Carnot, who, as a good Frenchman, is not desirous of gratuitously
increasing the embarrassments of France nor of taking more than France
could usefully and surely keep.
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