prosperity. Desperate situations produce desperate councils and
desperate measures. The people of France, almost generally, have been
taught to look for other resources than those which can be derived from
order, frugality, and industry. They are generally armed; and they are
made to expect much from the use of arms. _Nihil non arrogant armis._
Besides this, the retrograde order of society has something flattering
to the dispositions of mankind. The life of adventurers, gamesters,
gypsies, beggars, and robbers is not unpleasant. It requires restraint
to keep men from falling into that habit. The shifting tides of fear
and hope, the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, the alternate
famine and feast of the savage and the thief, after a time; render all
course of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and the
prospect only of a limited mediocrity at the end of long labor, to the
last degree tame, languid, and insipid. Those who have been once
intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it,
even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may
be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look
to anything but power for their relief. When did distress ever oblige a
prince to abdicate his authority? And what effect will it have upon
those who are made to believe themselves a people of princes?

The more active and stirring part of the lower orders having got
government and the distribution of plunder into their hands, they will
use its resources in each municipality to form a body of adherents.
These rulers and their adherents will be strong enough to overpower the
discontents of those who have not been able to assert their share of the
spoil. The unfortunate adventurers in the cheating lottery of plunder
will probably be the least sagacious or the most inactive and irresolute
of the gang. If, on disappointment, they should dare to stir, they will
soon be suppressed as rebels and mutineers by their brother rebels.