they are not supported by the intolerance of a vast majority, for, instead of fifteen or twenty orthodox against one heretic, they count in their church scarcely more than one orthodox against fifteen or twenty heretics.[2221]--They are not, like legitimate sovereigns, supported by the stubborn loyalty of an entire population, following in the steps of its chieftain out of the prestige of hereditary right and through habits of ancient fealty.

On the contrary, their reign is only a day old and they themselves are interlopers.

At first installed by a coup d'etat and afterwards by the semblance of an election, they have extorted or obtained by trick the suffrages through which they act.

They are so familiar with fraud and violence that, in their own Assembly, the ruling minority has seized and held on to power by violence and fraud, putting down the majority by riots, and the departments by force of arms.

To give their brutalities the semblance of right, they improvise two pompous demonstrations, first, the sudden manufacture of a paper constitution, which molders away in their archives, and next, the scandalous farce of a hollow and compulsory plebiscite .-- A dozen leaders of the party concentrate unlimited authority in their own hands; but, as admitted by them, their authority is derivative; it is the Convention which makes them its delegates; their precarious title has to be renewed monthly; a turn of the majority may sweep them and their work away to-morrow; an insurrection of the people, whom they have familiarized with insurrection, may to-morrow sweep them away, their work and their majority .-- They maintain only a disputed, limited and transient ascendancy over their adherents.