These are the elements of a
people of place-hunters; in whom the course of politics is mainly
determined by place-hunting; where equality alone is cared for, but
not liberty; where the contests of political parties are but struggles
to decide whether the power of meddling in everything shall belong
to one class or another, perhaps merely to one knot of public men or
another; where the idea entertained of democracy is merely that of
opening offices to the competition of all instead of a few; where, the
more popular the institutions, the more innumerable are the places
created, and the more monstrous the over-government exercised by all
over each, and by the executive over all. It would be as unjust as
it would be ungenerous to offer this, or anything approaching to it,
as an unexaggerated picture of the French people; yet the degree in
which they do participate in this type of character has caused
representative government by a limited class to break down by excess
of corruption, and the attempt at representative government by the
whole male population to end in giving one man the power of consigning
any number of the rest, without trial, to Lambessa or Cayenne,
provided he allows all of them to think themselves not excluded from
the possibility of sharing his favours.
The point of character which, beyond any other, fits the people of
this country for representative government is that they have almost
universally the contrary characteristic.
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