the reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed,
during three or four years, a written Constitution, by which rights
were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly
violated; and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws
which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the
executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies--the freedom of
election--the freedom of debate--the freedom of the press--the personal
freedom of citizens--were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in which
the Republic was governed was by coups d'etat. On one occasion, the
legislative councils were placed under military restraint by the
directors. Then, again, directors were deposed by the legislative
councils. Elections were set aside by the executive authority.
Ship-loads of writers and speakers were sent, without a legal trial,
to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which
revolutions, effected by violence, almost always leave a nation. The
habit of obedience had been lost. The spell of prescription had been
broken. Those associations on which, far more than on any arguments
about property and order, the authority of magistrates rests, had
completely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in
the physical force which it could bring to its support. Moral force it
had none. It was itself a government sprung from a recent convulsion.
Its own fundamental maxim was, that rebellion might be justifiable. Its
own existence proved that rebellion might be successful. The people
had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistance to the
constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the
constituted authorities yield to that resistance. The whole political
world was "without form and void"--an incessant whirl of hostile atoms,
which, every moment, formed some new combination. The only man who could
fix the agitated elements of society in a stable form was following a
wild vision of glory and empire through the Syrian deserts. The time was
not yet come, when

"Confusion heard his voice; and wild uproar
Stood ruled:"

when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved,
were to rise a new dynasty, a new peerage, a new church, and a new code.

The dying words of Madame Roland, "Oh, Liberty! how many crimes are
committed in thy name!" were at that time echoed by many of the
most upright and benevolent o