As a rule, the nearest
general, or resident titulary in every small state which has to be
turned to account, stirs up malcontents against the established
authorities, never lacking under the ancient r?gime, especially all
social outcasts, adventurers, coffee-house ranters and young hot-
heads, in short the Jacobins of the country ; these, to the French
representative, are henceforth the people of the country, if only a
knot of the vilest sort. The legal authorities are forbidden to
repress them, or punish them; they are inviolable. Employing threats
or main force, he interferes in their support, or to sanction their
assaults; he breaks up, or obliges them to break up, the vital organ
of society; here, royalty or aristocracy, there, the senate and the
magistracy, everywhere the old hierarchy, all cantonal, provincial and
municipal statutes and secular federation or constitutions. He then
inaugurates on this cleared ground the government of Reason, that is
to say, some artificial imitation of the French constitution; he
himself, to this end, appoints the new magistrates. If he allows them
to be elected, it is by his clients and under his bayonets; this
constitutes a subject republic under the name of an ally, and which
commissioners dispatched from Paris manage to the beat of the drum.
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