OF THE PUBLIC TRANQUILLITY.
Lastly, among the crimes of the third kind are especially those which
disturb the public peace and civic tranquillity; such as noises and riots
in the public streets, which were made for the convenience of men and
traffic, or fanatical sermons that excite the easily roused passions of
the curious multitude. For their passions gather force from the number
of hearers, and more from a certain obscure and mysterious enthusiasm,
than from clear and quiet reasoning, which never has any influence over a
large mass of men.
The lighting of a city by night at the public expense; the distribution
of guards in the different quarters; simple moral discourses on
religion, but only in the silent and holy quiet of churches, protected
by public authority; speeches on behalf of private and public interests
in national assemblies, parliaments, or wherever else the majesty of
sovereignty resides—all these are efficacious means for preventing the
dangerous condensation of popular passions. These means are a principal
branch of that magisterial vigilance which the French call _police_;
but if this is exercised by arbitrary laws, not laid down in a code of
general circulation, a door is opened to tyranny, which ever surrounds
all the boundaries of political liberty. I find no exception to this
general axiom, that ‘Every citizen ought to know when his actions
are guilty or innocent.’ If censors, and arbitrary magistrates in
general, are necessary in any government, it is due to the weakness
of its constitution, and is foreign to the nature of a well organised
government. More victims have been sacrificed to obscure tyranny by the
uncertainty of their lot than by public and formal cruelty, for the
latter revolts men’s minds more than it abases them. The true tyrant
always begins by mastering opinion, the precursor of courage; for the
latter can only show itself in the clear light of truth, in the fire of
passion, or in ignorance of danger.