All this constitutes a steady, systematic defense of insubordination and revolt; as, "under the name of hoarding and monopoly, commerce and industry are described as misdemeanors;" property is unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent and integrity silenced." In short, a public conspiracy made against society in the very name of society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty is made use of as a seal" to exempt a few tyrants from punishment.

Such a protest said aloud what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and from month to month, graver excesses exited greater censure.
"Anarchy exists[2372] to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the ambassador of the United States.

The horror and apprehension, which the licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that there is reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with that security to persons and property, experienced even under the worst governments in Europe." Another observer, not less competent,[2373] says: "it is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI.

finally succumbed, he had more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his flight to Varennes." The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791 and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.[2374] "Eighteen thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists, seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the tribunals,[2375] all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the elite of the nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived from day to day were for him, and for the "Right" of the Assembly against the "Left".

If internal trouble had not been complicated by external difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and this the King expected.