Each faction inside of the party, having forged its ideal people
according to its own logical process and necessities, exercised the
orthodox privilege of claiming the monopoly of sovereignty.[145] To
secure the benefits of omnipotence, it has combated its rivals with
falsified, annulled or constrained elections, with plots and
mendacity, with ambushes and sudden assaults, with the pikes of the
rabble and with the bayonets of soldiers. It has then massacred,
guillotined, shot, and deported the vanquished as tyrants, traitors or
rebels, and survivors do not forget this. They have learnt what their
so called eternal constitutions amount to; they know how to estimate
their proclamations and oaths, their respect for law, justice, their
humanity; they understand them and know that they are all so many
fraternal Cains,[146] all more or less debased, dangerous, soiled and
depraved by their work; the distrust is irremediable. They can still
turn out manifests, decrees and cabals, and get up revolutions, but
they can no longer agree amongst themselves and heartily defer to the
justified ascendancy and recognized authority of any one or among
their own body. - After ten years of mutual assault there is not one
among the three thousand legislators who have sat in the sovereign
assemblies that can count on the deference and loyalty of a hundred
Frenchmen.
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