Paris is
compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the
force of any of the square republics; and this strength is collected and
condensed within a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connection of its parts, which will not be affected by any scheme of a
geometrical constitution; nor does it much signify whether its
proportion of representation be more or less, since it has the whole
draught of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the kingdom,
being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual
means and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least,
confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate
members, but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm this
part of the plan, the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that no
two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris, thus
formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted that the
geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be
sunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons,
Normans,--but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly.
But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is that the
inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country.
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