operty is unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent
and integrity silenced." In short, a public conspiracy made against
society in the very name of society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty
is made use of as a seal" to exempt a few tyrants from punishment. Such
a protest said aloud what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and
from month to month, graver excesses exited greater censure.

"Anarchy exists[2372] to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the
ambassador of the United States. The horror and apprehension, which the
licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that there
is reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would
consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with that security
to persons and property, experienced even under the worst governments in
Europe."

Another observer, not less competent,[2373] says:

"it is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI. finally succumbed, he had
more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his
flight to Varennes."

The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791
and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.[2374] "Eighteen
thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists,
seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the
tribunals,[2375] all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large
portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the elite of the
nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived from
day to day were for him, and for the "Right" of the Assembly against
the "Left". If internal trouble had not been complicated by external
difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and this
the King expected. In accepting the Constitution, he thought that its
defects would be revealed in practical operation and that they would
lead to a reform. In the mean time he scrupulously observed the
Constitution, and, through interest as well as conscience, kept his oath
to the letter. "The most faithful execution of the Constitution," he
said to one of his ministers, "is the surest way to make the nation
see the changes that ought to be made in it."[2376]--In other words, he
counted on experience, and it is very probable that if there had been
nothing to interfere with experience, his calculations would have
finally chosen between the defenders of order and the instigators of
disorder. It wo