Whilst the Royalists rather sapped and encumbered than supported the throne to which they adhered, their errors were carefully pointed out, circulated, and exaggerated, by the Jacobin, or as they called themselves, the Patriotic party. This faction, small in numbers, but formidable from their audacity, their union, and the dreadful recollection of their former power and principles, consisted of ex-generals, whose laurels had faded with the Republic; ex-ministers and functionaries, whose appointments and influence had not survived the downfall of the Directory; men of letters, who hoped again to rule the state by means of proclamations and journals; and philosophers, to whose vanity or enthusiasm abstract principles of unattainable liberty, and undesirable equality, were dearer than all the oceans of blood, and extent of guilt and misery, which they had already cost, and were likely again to occasion. It cannot be denied, that, in the discussion of the original rights of humanity, and constitutions of society, several of this party showed distinguished talent, and that their labours were calculated to keep up a general love of liberty, and to promote inquiry into the principles upon which it is founded. Unfortunately, however, their theoretical labours in framing constitutions diverted their attention from the essential points of government, to its mere external form, and led them, for example, to prefer a republic, where every species of violence was practised by the little dictator of the day, to a limited monarchy, under which life, person, and property, were protected. The chiefs of this party were men of that presumptuous and undoubting class, who, after having failed repeatedly in political experiments, were as ready as ever again to undertake them, with the same unhesitating and self-deceptive confidence of success. They were never satisfied even with what they themselves had done; for as there is no end of aiming at an ideal perfection in any human establishment, they proceeded with alterations on their own work, as if what Butler says of religion had been true in politics, and that a form of government "was intended For nothing else but to be mended."