Without a preconcerted plan a person who visits Paris will be lost
among the multitude of captivating subjects which require his
attention, and he will return to his native country having seen many
things but obtained a knowledge of none.
Apart from the private motive which brought me here I live in France
only for the good of my country.
My inquiries, conversations and labours, are directed to that end.
On the final result of this examination of the state of the French
Republic depends my future resolutions and my future destiny.
After twelve years of active engagement on the disturbed theatre of
public life; after having seen the rise and fall of contending factions
at home and abroad; after having beheld the theories I had studied
completely belie themselves in practice, I may, I think, be entitled to
give an opinion on political occurrences and public establishments.
On such considerations I proceed to describe the governments, laws,
institutions, manners, relative form, internal resources and ultimate
view of a people, whom I have seen at one time frivolous, abject and
superstitious; at another period starting like Lazarus from a dead
repose, roused to a vindication of national liberty; afterwards the
base tools of sanguinary demagogues, furious, vindictive and cowardly,
renouncing their obligations to God and man, and astounding the
civilised world by their folly and their crime--next sighing after that
regulated freedom and social order for which they had shed the blood of
millions, but never been worthy or able enough to establish; lastly,
conscious of their unfitness to be free, relapsing again into the
bosom of that ancient despotism, which they had disdainfully trodden
under foot, with all the superadded terrors of military government,
and a suspicious administration; laughing at the very names of public
virtue and public liberty, and themselves the terror and the mockery
of Europe. These are great events, worthy of solemn investigation;
they have no parallel in the history of mankind. The principal agents
in these scenes merit alternate pity and indignation, but the scenes
themselves illustrate and present to our minds during the short space
of ten years the history of men for ages.