Under no pretext must he separate himself from the whole, at no price, must he be allowed to form for himself a small homeland within the large one, for, by the affection he entertains for the small one, he frustrates the objects of the large one.

Nothing is worse than political, civil, religious and domestic federalism; we combat it under all its forms.[2187] In this particular, the Constituent Assembly has paved the way for us, since it has broken up all the principal historic or material groups by which men have separated themselves from the masses and formed a band apart, provinces, clergy, nobles, parliaments, religious orders and trades-unions.

We complete its work, we destroy churches, we suppress literary or scientific associations, educational or benevolent societies, even down to financial companies.[2188] We prohibit any departmental or commercial "local spirit:" we find "odious and opposed to all principles, that, amongst municipalities, some should be rich and others poor, that one should have immense patrimonial possessions and another nothing but debts."[2189] We regard these possessions as the nation's, and we place indebtedness to the nation's account.

We take grain from rich communes and departments, to feed poor communes and departments.

We build bridges, roads and canals of each district, at the expense of the State; "we centralize the labor of the French people in a broad, opulent fashion."[2190] We want no more local interests, recollections, dialects, idioms and patriotisms.