In this contract "all classes are reduced to one,[2317] the complete surrender of each associate, with all his rights, to the community, each giving himself up entirely, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, of which whatever he possesses forms a part," each becoming with respect to himself and every act of his private life a delegate of the State, a responsible clerk, in short, a functionary, a functionary of the people, henceforth the unique, the absolute, and the universal sovereign.

A terrible principle, proclaimed and applied for ten years, below by the mob and above by the government! Popular opinion had adopted it; accordingly the passage from the sovereignty of the King to the sovereignty of the people was easy, smooth,[2318] and to the novice in reasoning, the old-fashioned taxable and workable subject, to whom the principle conferred a portion of the sovereignty, the temptation was too great.
At once, according to their custom, the jurists put themselves at the service of the new reign.

And no dogma was better suited their to authoritative instinct; no axiom furnished them so convenient a fulcrum on which to set up and turn their logical wheel.

This wheel, which they had latterly managed with care and caution under the ancient Regime, had suddenly in their hands turned with frightful speed and effect in order to convert the rigid, universal, and applied laws, the intermittent processes, the theoretical pretensions, and the worst precedents of the monarchy into practice.

This meant * the use of extraordinary commissions, * accusations of lese majeste, * the suppression of legal formalities, * the persecution of religious beliefs and of personal opinions, * the right of condemning publications and of coercing thought, * the right of instruction and education, * the rights of pre-emption, of requisition, of confiscation, and of proscription, in short, pure and perfect arbitrariness.