] They were for it merely borrowed instruments;
thus originating, they escaped its control; it could not make them work
as it wanted them to work. On most occasions they would shirk their
duties; at other times, on receiving orders, they would stand inert;
or, again, they would act outside of or beyond their special function,
either going too far or acting in a contrary sense; never did they act
with moderation and precision, with coherence and consequence. For this
reason any desire of the government to do its job proved unsuccessful.
Its legal subordinates--incapable, timid, lukewarm, unmanageable, or
even hostile--obeyed badly, did not obey at all, or willfully disobeyed.
The blade of the executive instrument, loose in the handle, glanced or
broke off when the thrust had to be made.

In the second place, never could the two or three motor forces thrusting
the handle act in harmony, owing to the clashing of so many of them; one
always ended in breaking down the other. The Constituent Assembly
had set aside the King, the Legislative Assembly had deposed him, the
Convention had decapitated him. Afterward each fraction of the sovereign
body in the Convention had proscribed the other; the Montagnards had
guillotined the Girondists, and the Thermidorians had guillotined
the Montagnards. Later, under the Constitution of the year III, the
Fructidorians had banished the Constitutionalists, the Directory had
purged the Councils, and the Councils had purged the Directory.--Not
only did the democratic and parliamentary institution fail in its work
and break down on trial, but, again, through its own action, it became
transformed into its opposite. In a year or two a coup d'etat in Paris
took place; a faction seized the central power and converted it into
an absolute power in the hands of five or six ringleaders. The new
government at once re-forged the executive instrument for its own
advantage and refastened the blade firmly on the handle; in the
provinces it dismissed those elected by the people and deprived the
governed of the right to choose their own rulers; henceforth, through
its proconsuls on mission, or through its resident commissioners, it
alone appointed, superintended, and regulated on the spot all local
authorities.[2102]

Thus the liberal constitution, at its close, gave birth to a centralized
despotism, and this was the worst of its species, at once formless and
monstrous; for it was born out of a civil crime, w