who no longer performs his ancient
service may perform a new one in exchange for it. Instituted for war
when life was militant, he may serve in quiet times when the regime
is pacific, while the advantage to the nation is great in which this
transformation is accomplished; for, retaining its chiefs, it is
relieved of the uncertain and perilous operation which consists in
creating others. There is nothing more difficult to establish than
a government, that is to say, a stable government: this involves the
command of some and the obedience of all, which is against nature. That
a man in his study, often a feeble old person, should dispose of the
lives and property of twenty or thirty million men, most of whom he has
never seen; that he should order them to pay away a tenth or a fifth of
their income and they should do it; that he should order them to go and
slaughter or be slaughtered and that they should go; that they should
thus continue for ten years, twenty years, through every kind of trial,
defeat, misery and invasion, as with the French under Louis XIV, the
English under Pitt, the Prussians under Frederick II., without either
sedition or internal disturbances, is certainly a marvelous thing. And,
for a people to remain free it is essential that they should be ready to
do this always. Neither this fidelity nor this concord is due to sober
reflection (la raison raisonnante); reason is too vacillating and too
feeble to bring about such a universal and energetic result. Abandoned
to itself and suddenly restored to a natural condition, the human flock
is capable only of agitation, of mutual strife until pure force at
length predominates, as in barbarous times, and until, amidst the dust
and outcry, some military leader rises up who is, generally, a butcher.
Historically considered it is better to continue so than to begin
over again. Hence, especially when the majority is uncultivated, it is
beneficial to have chiefs designated beforehand through the hereditary
custom by which people follow them, and through the special education
by which they are qualified. In this case the public has no need to
seek for them to obtain them. They are already at hand, in each canton,
visible, accepted beforehand; they are known by their names, their
title, their fortune, their way of living; deference to their authority
is established. They are almost always deserving of this authority; born
and brought up to exercise it they find in tradi