It strikes unequally; it is so modified in many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes its own principles.

This fact may be noted more or less distinctly throughout all ages.

Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert that the decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced throughout France ?--for instance, that the requisitions of the Convention for men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in the depths of Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at the great centres of social life?
What philosopher dares deny that a head falls to-day in such or such department, while in a neighboring department another head stays on its shoulders though guilty of a crime identically the same, and often more horrible?
We ask for equality in life, and inequality reigns in law and in the death penalty! When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the administrative system is no longer the same.

There are perhaps a hundred cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and there the intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the problem of public welfare and future security which the law seeks to solve; but throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended beyond immediate gratification; people rebel against all that lessens it.

Therefore in nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia which defeats all legal action, both municipal and governmental.