n, it
proceeded cautiously and with moderation. In this way the discretion
of the ruler lessened the resistance of the subject, and a daring
enterprise, even mischievous, was not outrageous; it might be carried
out; nothing was required but a force in hand equal to the resistance it
provoked.

Again, and on the other hand, the tyrant possessed this force. Very many
and very strong arms stood behind the prince ready to cooperate with him
and countervail any resistance.--Behind Philip II. or Louis XIV. ready
to drive the dissidents out or at least to consent to their oppression,
stood the Catholic majority, as fanatical or as illiberal as their king.
Behind Philip II., Louis XIV., Frederick II., and Peter the Great, stood
the entire nation, equally violent, rallied around the sovereign through
his consecrated title and uncontested right, through tradition and
custom, through a rigid sentiment of duty and the vague idea of public
security.--Peter the Great counted among his auxiliaries every eminent
and cultivated man in the country; Cromwell had his disciplined and
twenty-times victorious army; the caliph or sultan brought along with
him his military and privileged population.--Aided by cohorts of this
stamp, it was easy to raise a heavy mass, and even maintain it in a
fixed position. Once the operation was concluded there followed a sort
of equilibrium; the mass, kept in the air by a permanent counterbalance,
only required a little daily effort to prevent it from falling.

It is just the opposite with the Jacobin enterprise. When it is put
into operation, the theory, more exacting, adds an extra weight to the
uplifted mass, and, finally, a burden of almost infinite weight.--At
first, the Jacobin confined his attacks to royalty, to nobility, to
the Church, to parliaments, to privileges, to ecclesiastical and feudal
possessions, in short, to medieval foundations. Then he attacks yet more
ancient and more solid foundations, positive religion, property and the
family.--For four years he has been satisfied with demolition and now he
wants to construct. His object is not merely to do away with a positive
faith and suppress social inequality, to proscribe revealed dogmas,
hereditary beliefs, an established cult, the supremacy of rank and
superiority of fortunes, wealth, leisure, refinement and elegance, but
he wants, in addition to all this, to re-fashion the citizen. He wants
to create new sentiments, impose natural religion