If, with all this, you still find them, not absolutely perfect, try the French recipe: submit all your citizens to a conscription, in order that your regiments may not be composed of the refuse of the nation, Create--" "Stop!" cried the prelate.
"Monsignore ?" "I stopped you short, my son, because T perceive that you are getting beyond the real and the possible.

_Primo_, we have no citizens; we have subjects.

_Secundo_, the conscription is a revolutionary measure, which we will not adopt at any price; it consecrates a principle of equality as much opposed to the ideas of the Government as to the habits of the country.

It might possibly give us a very good army, but that army would belong to the nation, not to the Sovereign.

We will at once put away, if you please, this dangerous utopia." "It might gain you some popularity." "Far from it.