--It is true, the reigning party may plead in their justification that
they only inflict what they would themselves have suffered, had the
Jacobins prevailed; and this is an additional proof of the weakness and
instability of a form of government which is incapable of resisting
opposition, and which knows no medium between yielding to its
adversaries, and destroying them.

In a well organized constitution, it is supposed that a liberal spirit of
party is salutary. Here they dispute the alternatives of power and
emolument, or prisons and guillotines; and the sole result to the people
is the certainty of being sacrificed to the fears, and plundered by the
rapacity of either faction which may chance to acquire the superiority.--
Had the government any permanent or inherent strength, a party watching
its errors, and eager to attack them, might, in time, by these perpetual
collisions, give birth to some principles of liberty and order. But, as
I have often had occasion to notice, this species of republicanism is in
itself so weak, that it cannot exist except by a constant recurrence to
the very despotism it professes to exclude. Hence it is jealous and
suspicious, and all opposition to it is fatal; so that, to use an
argument somewhat similar to Hume's on the liberty of the press in
republics, the French possess a sort of freedom which does not admit of
enjoyment; and, in order to boast that they have a popular constitution,
are obliged to support every kind of tyranny.*

* Hume observes, that absolute monarchies and republics nearly
approach; for the excess of liberty in the latter renders such
restraints necessary as to make them in practice resemble the
former.