He was as emphatic as his race is, but he was never pedantic, and
as for the vanity of which Lorain Petre accuses him and his race, it never
existed. Lorain Petre's pamphlet is a work of passion masquerading as one
of wisdom and of impartiality.]
"Happy is the citizen," he said in his address, "who, under the shield
of the armies he commands, has convoked national sovereignty to
exercise its absolute will.... Only a forceful need, coupled with the
imperious will of the people, could force me into the terrible and
hazardous position of Dictator and Supreme Chief of the Republic.
I breathe freely now when I return to you this authority, which, with
much danger, difficulty and sorrow, I have succeeded in keeping in the
midst of the most horrible misfortunes which can befall a people."
Among the most remarkable parts of this document, the following will bear
close and careful study:
"The continuation of authority in one individual has frequently been
the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential
in popular systems, because nothing is so dangerous as to permit a
citizen to remain long in power. The people get used to obeying
and he gets used to commanding it, from which spring usurpation and
tyranny." ... "We have been subjected by deception rather than by
force. We have been degraded by vice rather than by superstition.
Slavery is a child of darkness; an ignorant people becomes a blind
instrument of its own destruction.
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