Now that it
has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of
the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest
expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for
reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces
of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished this second
part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up from her seat to
exclaim: "Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!"
The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military
organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of
government--an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together
with a military force of another million men--; this fearful body
of parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society,
stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute monarchy,
along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to hasten.
The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were
transformed into so many at-tributes of the Executive power; the feudal
dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of
conflicting medieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a
government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory.
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