five articles, the Constitutional bill in one hundred and twenty-four
articles, political principles and institutions of every sort,
electoral, legislative, executive, administrative, judicial, financial
and military;[5] in three weeks all is drawn up and passed on the
double. -- Of course, the new Constitutionalists do not propose to
produce an effective and serviceable instrument; that is the least of
their worries. Hérault Séchelles, the reporter of the bill, writes on
the 7th of June, "to have procured for him at once the laws of Minos,
of which he has urgent need;" very urgent need, as he must hand in the
Constitution that week.[6] Such circumstance is sufficiently
characteristic of both the workmen and the work. All is mere show and
pretense. Some of the workmen are shrewd politicians whose sole
object is to furnish the public with words instead of realities;
others, ordinary scribblers of abstractions, or even ignoramuses, and
unable to distinguish words from reality, imagine that they are
framing laws by stringing together a lot of phrases. -- It is not a
difficult job; the phrases are ready-made to hand. "Let the plotters
of anti-popular systems," says the reporter, "painfully elaborate
their projects! Frenchmen . . . . have only to consult their
hearts to read the Republic there!"[7] Drafted in accordance with the
"Contrat-Social," filled with Greek and Latin reminiscences, it is a
summary "in pithy style" of the manual of current aphorisms then in
vogue, Rousseau's mathematical formulas and prescriptions, "the axioms
of truth and the consequences flowing from these axioms," in short, a
rectilinear constitution which any school-boy may spout on leaving
college. Like a handbill posted on the door of a new shop, it
promises to customers every imaginable article that is handsome and
desirable. Would you have rights and liberties? You will find them
all here. Never has the statement been so clearly made, that the
government is the servant, creature and tool of the governed; it is