They get nothing by it. Commencing their
labors on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of
slothful men. The difficulties, which they rather had eluded than
escaped, meet them again in their course; they multiply and thicken on
them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an
industry without limit and without direction; and, in conclusion,
the whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has
obliged the arbitrary Assembly of France to commence their schemes
of reform with abolition and total destruction.* But is it in
destroying and pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do
this as well at least as your assemblies. The shallowest
understanding, the rudest hand is more than equal to that task. Rage
and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence,
deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years. The
errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable.
It calls for little ability to point them out; and where absolute
power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice
and the establishment together. The same lazy but restless disposition
which loves sloth and hates quiet directs the politicians when they
come to work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To
make everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as easy as
to destroy.
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