The object of the work is to account for the rapid progress of the
Revolution, to point out the principal causes which enabled a few
comparatively obscure men to overthrow in six weeks a Monarchy of many
centuries.
'I am inclined,' I said, 'to attribute the rapidity with which the old
institutions of France fell, to the fact that there was no _lex loci_ in
France. That the laws, or rather the customs, of the different provinces
were dissimilar, and that nothing was defined. That as soon as the
foundations or the limits of any power were examined, it crumbled to
pieces; so that the Assembly became omnipotent in the absence of any
authority with ascertained rights and jurisdiction.'
'There is much truth in that,' answered Tocqueville, 'but there is also
much truth in what looks like an opposite theory--namely, that the
Monarchy fell because its power was too extensive and too absolute.
Nothing is so favourable to revolution as centralisation, because whoever
can seize the central point is obeyed down to the extremities. Now the
centralisation of France under the old Monarchy, though not so complete
as its Democratic and Imperial tyrants afterwards made it, was great.
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