"[115] - To exercise
their violence within they require peril without; lacking the pretext
of public safety they cannot prolong their usurpation, their
dictatorship, their despotism, their inquisition, their proscriptions,
their exactions. Suppose that peace is effected, will it be possible
for the government, hated and despised as it is, to maintain and elect
its minions against public clamor at the coming elections? Will so
many retired generals consent to live on half-pay, indolent and
obedient? Will Hoche, so ardent and so absolute, will Bonaparte, who
already meditates his coup-d'?tat,[116] be willing to stand sentry for
four petty lawyers or litterateurs without any titles and for Barras,
a street-general, who never saw a regular battle? Moreover on this
skeleton of France, desiccated by five years of spoliation, how can
the armed swarm be fed even provisionally, the swarm, which, for two
years past, subsists only through devouring neighboring nations?
Afterwards, how disband four hundred thousand hungry officers and
soldiers? And how, with an empty Treasury, supply the millions which,
by a solemn decree, under the title of a national recompense, have
once more just been promised to them.
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