as it is in construction, it invents for the restoration of order in
a society which is turned upside down a machine which would, of
itself, create disorder in a tranquil society. The most absolute
and most concentrated government would not be strong enough to
effect without disturbance a similar equalization of ranks, the same
dismemberment of associations, and the same displacement of
property. No social transformation can be peacefully accomplished
without a well-commanded army, obedient and everywhere present, as
was the case in the emancipation of the Russian serfs by Emperor
Alexander. The new Constitution,[42] on the contrary, reduces the
King to the position of an honorary president, suspected and called
in question by a disorganized State. Between him and the
legislative body it interposes nothing but sources of conflict, and
suppresses all means of concord. The monarch has no hold whatever
on the administrative departments which he must direct; the mutual
independence of the powers, from the center to the extremities of
the State, everywhere produces indifference, negligence, and
disobedience between the injunctions issued and their execution.
France is a federation of forty thousand municipal sovereignties, in
which the authority of legal magistrates varies according to the
caprice of active citizens. These active citizens, too heavily
loaded, shy away from the performance of public duty; in which a
minority of fanatics and ambitious men monopolize the right to
speak, to vote, all influence, the power and all action. They
justify their multiple ursurpations, their unbridled despotism, and
their increasing encroachments by the Declaration of the Rights of
Man. The masterpiece[43] of ideal abstractions and of practical
absurdities is accomplished. In accordance with the Constitution
spontaneous anarchy becomes legalized anarchy. The latter is
perfect; nothing finer of the kind has been seen since the ninth