six-penny catechisms circulated by thousands in the country and in the
suburbs of the towns and cities,[12] a village attorney, a customs
clerk, a theater attendant, a sergeant of a soldier's mess, becomes a
legislator and philosopher. He criticizes Malouet, Mirabeau, the
Ministry, the King, the Assembly, the Church, foreign Cabinets,
France, and all Europe. Consequently, on these important subjects,
which always seemed forever forbidden to him, he offers resolutions,
reads addresses, makes harangues, obtains applause, and congratulates
himself on having argued so well and with such big words. To hold fort
on questions that are not understood is now an occupation, a matter of
pride and profit.

"More is uttered in one day," says an eye-witness,[13] "in one section
of Paris than in one year in all the Swiss political assemblies put
together. An Englishman would give six weeks of study to what we
dispose of in a quarter of an hour."

Everywhere, in the town halls, in popular meetings, in the sectional
assemblies, in the wine shops, on the public promenades, on street
corners vanity erects a tribune of verbosity.

"Contemplate the incalculable activity of such a machine in a
loquacious nation where the passion for being something dominates all
other affections, where vanity has more phases than there are starts
in the firmament, where reputations already cost no more than the
trouble of insisting on their being deserved, where society is divided
between mediocrities and their trumpeters who laud them as divinities;
where so few people are content with their lot, where the corner
grocer is prouder of his epaulette than the Grand Condé of his
Marshal's baton, where agitation without object or resources is