ting the
Revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "which derived
their virtue from and had their roots in conscience, which were
sustained by fanaticism and the hopes of another world," he thus
concludes: "Our Revolution, purely political, is wholly rooted in
egotism, in everybody's amour propre, in the combinations of which is
found the common interest." ("Brissot devoile," by Camille Desmoulins,
January, 1792)--Bouchez et Roux, XIII, 207.)]

[Footnote 1122: Rousseau's idea of the omnipotence of the State is also
that of Louis XIV and Napoleon... It is curious to see the development
of the same idea in the mind of a contemporary bourgeois, like Retif de
la Bretonne, half literary and half one of the people ("Nuits de Paris,"
XVe nuit, 377, on the September Massacres) "No, I do not pity those
fanatical priests; they have done the country too much mischief.
Whatever a society, or a majority of it, desires, that is right. He
who opposes this, who calls down war and vengeance on the Nation, is
a monster. Order is always found in the agreement of the majority. The
minority is always guilty, I repeat it, even if it is morally right.
Nothing but common sense is needed to see that truth."--Ibid. (On the
execution of Louis XVI.), p. 447. "Had the nation the right to condemn
and execute him? No thinking person can ask such a question. The nation
is everything in itself; its power is that which the whole human kind
would have if but one nation, one single government governed the
globe. Who would dare then dispute the power of humanity? It is this
indisputable power that a nation has, to hang even an innocent man,
felt by the ancient Greeks, which led them to exile Aristoteles and put
Phocion to death. 'Oh truth, unrecognized by our contemporaries, what
evil has arisen through forgetting it!'"]

[Footnote 1123: Moniteur, XI. 46. Speech by Isnard in the Assembly,
Jan. 5, 1792. "The people are now conscious of their dignity. They know,
according to the constitution, that every Frenchman's motto is: 'Live
free, the equal of all, and one of the common sovereignty.'"--Guillon
de Montleon, I. 445. Speech by Chalier, in the Lyons Central Club, March
21, 1793. "Know that you are kings, and more than kings. Do you not feel
sovereignty circulating in your veins?"]

[Footnote 1124: Moniteur, V. 136. (Celebration of the Federation, July
14, 1790.)]

[Footnote 1125: Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes pendant la
Revolution,"