Their purpose everywhere seems to have been to evade and slip aside from
DIFFICULTY. This it has been the glory of the great masters in all the
arts to confront, and to overcome; and when they had overcome the first
difficulty, to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new
difficulties; thus to enable them to extend the empire of their science;
and even to push forward, beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe
instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian
and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves
us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that
wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our
antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges
us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us
to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be
superficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a
task, it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and little
fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the world created
governments with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary
monarchy of France; they have created the arbitrary republic of Paris.
With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the plenitude of
force. They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours 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 phrensy 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 these
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. No difficulties occur in what has never
been tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of
what has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all
the wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little
or no opposition.