You cannot
propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying
the debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on the confusion of
the army of the state, without disclosing the worse disorders of the
armed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the civil
betrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody carefully to peruse the
eloquent speech (such it is) of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes
the salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of the
troops. These troops are to preserve the well-disposed part of the
municipalities, which is confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage
of the worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalities
affect a sovereignty, and will command those troops which are necessary
for their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court them. The
municipalities, by the necessity of their situation, and by the
republican powers they have obtained, must, with relation to the
military, be the masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each
successively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according to
circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the
municipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concord
where authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the
Assembly attempts to cure the distempers by the distempers themselves;
and they hope to preserve themselves from a purely military democracy by
giving it a debauched interest in the municipal.
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