A correct knowledge of the "Contrat Social" and keen critical powers were the prime requisites of Jacobinical statesmanship.

Knowledge of the history of France, the faculty of gauging the real strength of popular feelings, tact in conciliating important interests, all were alike despised.
Institutions and class interests were as nothing in comparison with that imposing abstraction, the general will.

For this alone could philosophers legislate and factions conspire.
From these lofty aims and exasperating methods Bonaparte was speedily weaned.

If victorious analysis led to this; if it could only pull down, not reconstruct; if, while legislating for the general will, Jacobins harassed one class after another and produced civil war, then away with their pedantries in favour of the practical statecraft which attempted one task at a time and aimed at winning back in turn the alienated classes.

Then, and then alone, after civic peace had been re-established, would he attempt the reconstruction of the civil order in the same tentative manner, taking up only this or that frayed end at once, trusting to time, skill, and patience to transform the tangle into a symmetrical pattern.