govern itself through the medium of its representatives.

The great revolutions have usually commenced from the top, not
from the bottom; but once the people is unchained it is to the
people that revolution owes its might.

It is obvious that revolutions have never taken place, and will
never take place, save with the aid of an important fraction of
the army. Royalty did not disappear in France on the day when
Louis XVI. was guillotined, but at the precise moment when his
mutinous troops refused to defend him.

It is more particularly by mental contagion that armies become
disaffected, being indifferent enough at heart to the established
order of things. As soon as the coalition of a few officers had
succeeded in overthrowing the Turkish Government the Greek
officers thought to imitate them and to change their government,
although there was no analogy between the two regimes.

A military movement may overthrow a government--and in the
Spanish republics the Government is hardly ever destroyed by any
other means--but if the revolution is to be productive of great
results it must always be based upon general discontent and
general hopes.

Unless it is universal and excessive, discontent alone is not
sufficient to bring about a revolution. It is easy to lead a
handful of men to pillage, destroy, and massacre, but to raise a
whole people, or any great portion of that people, calls for the
continuous or repeated action of leaders. These exaggerate the