There is nothing more difficult to establish than a government, that is to say, a stable government: this involves the command of some and the obedience of all, which is against nature.

That a man in his study, often a feeble old person, should dispose of the lives and property of twenty or thirty million men, most of whom he has never seen; that he should order them to pay away a tenth or a fifth of their income and they should do it; that he should order them to go and slaughter or be slaughtered and that they should go; that they should thus continue for ten years, twenty years, through every kind of trial, defeat, misery and invasion, as with the French under Louis XIV, the English under Pitt, the Prussians under Frederick II., without either sedition or internal disturbances, is certainly a marvelous thing.

And, for a people to remain free it is essential that they should be ready to do this always.

Neither this fidelity nor this concord is due to sober reflection (la raison raisonnante); reason is too vacillating and too feeble to bring about such a universal and energetic result.

Abandoned to itself and suddenly restored to a natural condition, the human flock is capable only of agitation, of mutual strife until pure force at length predominates, as in barbarous times, and until, amidst the dust and outcry, some military leader rises up who is, generally, a butcher.
Historically considered it is better to continue so than to begin over again.