en ignoramuses, and unable to
distinguish words from reality, imagine that they are framing laws by
stringing together a lot of phrases.--It is not a difficult job; the
phrases are ready-made to hand. "Let the plotters of anti-popular
systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate their projects!
Frenchmen.... have only to consult their hearts to read the Republic
there!"[1107] Drafted in accordance with the "Contrat-Social," filled
with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a summary "in pithy style" of
the manual of current aphorisms then in vogue, Rousseau's mathematical
formulas and prescriptions, "the axioms of truth and the consequences
flowing from these axioms," in short, a rectilinear constitution which
any school-boy may spout on leaving college. Like a handbill posted
on the door of a new shop, it promises to customers every imaginable
article that is handsome and desirable. Would you have rights and
liberties? You will find them all here. Never has the statement been so
clearly made, that the government is the servant, creature and tool
of the governed; it is instituted solely "to guarantee to them their
natural, imprescriptible rights." [1108] Never has a mandate been more
strictly limited: "The right of expressing one's thoughts and opinions,
either through the press or in any other way; the right of peaceful
assembly, the free exercise of worship, cannot be interdicted." Never
have citizens been more carefully guarded against the encroachments and
excesses of public authority: "The law should protect public and
private liberties against the oppression of those who govern...
offenses committed by the people's mandatories and agents must never
go unpunished. Let free men instantly put to death every individual
usurping sovereignty. .. Every act against a man outside of the
cases and forms which the law determines is arbitrary and tyrannical;
whosoever is subjected to violence in the execution of this act has the
right to repel it by force... When the government violates the people's
rights insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the
people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."

To civil rights the generous legislator has added political rights, and
multiplied every precaution for maintaining the dependence of rulers on
the people.--In the first place, rulers are appointed by the people and
through direct choice or nearly direct choice: in primary meetings
the pe