Paris is compact; she has an enormous strength,
wholly disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics;
and this strength is collected and condensed within a narrow
compass. Paris has a natural and easy connection of its parts, which
will not be affected by any scheme of a geometrical constitution,
nor does it much signify whether its proportion of representation be
more or less, since it has the whole draft of fishes in its dragnet.
The other divisions of the kingdom, being hackled and torn to
pieces, and separated from all their habitual means and even
principles of union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate
against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinate members but
weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm this part of the
plan, the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that no two of
their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of
Paris, thus formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is
boasted that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local
ideas should be sunk, and that the people should no longer be Gascons,
Picards, Bretons, Normans, but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart,
and one Assembly. But instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater
likelihood is that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no
country.
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