These local governments are, in the original
plan, to be as nearly as possible composed in the same manner and on
the same principles with the elective assemblies. They are each of
them bodies perfectly compact and rounded in themselves.
You cannot but perceive in this scheme that it has a direct and
immediate tendency to sever France into a variety of republics, and to
render them totally independent of each other without any direct
constitutional means of coherence, connection, or subordination,
except what may be derived from their acquiescence in the
determinations of the general congress of the ambassadors from each
independent republic. Such in reality is the National Assembly, and
such governments I admit do exist in the world, though in forms
infinitely more suitable to the local and habitual circumstances of
their people. But such associations, rather than bodies politic,
have generally been the effect of necessity, not choice; and I believe
the present French power is the very first body of citizens who,
having obtained full authority to do with their country what they
pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous manner.
It is impossible not to observe that, in the spirit of this
geometrical distribution and arithmetical arrangement, these pretended
citizens treat France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as
conquerors, they have imitated the policy of the harshest of that
harsh race.
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