It is worth while to cite here a still more pointed example of the want of prevision, so common and so intelligible at that time. Writing in July 1791, he confutes those who asserted that an established and limited monarchy was a safeguard against a usurper, whose power is only limited by his own audacity and address, by pointing out that the extent of France, its divisions into departments, the separation between the various branches of the administration, the freedom of the press, the multitude of the public prints, were all so many insurmountable barriers against a French Cromwell. 'To anybody who has read with attention the history of the usurpation of Cromwell, it is clear that a single newspaper would have been enough to stop his success. It is clear that if the people of England had known how to read other books beside their Bible, the hypocritical tyrant, unmasked from his first step, would soon have ceased to be dangerous.' Again, is the nation to be cajoled by some ambitious general, gratifying its desire to be an empire-race? 'Is this what is asked by true friends of liberty, those who only seek that reason and right should have empire over men? _What provinces, conquered by a French general, will he despoil to buy our suffrages? Will he promise our soldiers, as the consuls promised the citizens of Rome, the pillage of Spain or of Syria?_ No, assuredly; it is because we cannot be an empire-nation that we shall remain a free nation.'[26] How few years, alas, between this conclusive reasoning, and the pillage of Italy, the campaign in Syria, the seizure of Spain! Condorcet was not a member of the Assembly in whose formation and composition he had taken so vivid and practical an interest. The first political functions which he was invited to undertake were those of a member of the municipality of Paris. In the tremendous drama of which the scenes were now opening, the Town-hall of Paris was to prove itself far more truly the centre of movement and action than the Constituent Assembly. The efforts of the Constituent Assembly to build up were tardy and ineffectual. The activity of the municipality of Paris in pulling down was after a time ceaseless, and it was thoroughly successful. The first mayor was the astronomer Bailly, Condorcet's defeated competitor at the Academy. With the fall of the Bastille, summary hangings at the nearest lantern-post, October insurrection of women, and triumphant and bloody compulsion of king, queen, and Assembly to Paris from Versailles, the two rivals, now colleagues, must have felt that the contests for them were indeed no longer academic. The astronomy of the one and the geometry of the other were for ever done with; and Condorcet's longing for active political life in preference to mere study was gratified to the very full.