“It is easy to conceive why peace was not concluded before the establishment of the constitutional government. The only government which then existed described itself as revolutionary; it was, in fact, only the tyranny of a few men who were soon overthrown by others, and it consequently presented no stability of principles or of views, no security either with respect to men or with respect to things. “It should seem that that stability and that security ought to have existed from the establishment, and as the effect of the constitutional system; and yet they did not exist more, perhaps even less, than they had done before. In truth, we did make some partial treaties; we signed a continental peace, and a general congress was held to confirm it; but these treaties, these diplomatic conferences, appear to have been the source of a new war, more inveterate and more bloody than before. “Before the 18th Fructidor (4th September) of the fifth year, the French Government exhibited to foreign nations so uncertain an existence that they refused to treat with it. After this great event, the whole power was absorbed in the Directory; the legislative body can hardly be said to have existed; treaties of peace were broken, and war carried everywhere, without that body having any share in those measures. The same Directory, after having intimidated all Europe, and destroyed, at its pleasure, several governments, neither knowing how to make peace or war, or how even to establish itself, was overturned by a breath, on the 13th Prairial (18th June), to make room for other men, influenced perhaps by different views, or who might be governed by different principles. “Judging, then, only from notorious facts, the French Government must be considered as exhibiting nothing fixed, neither in respect to men nor to things.” Here, then, is the picture, down to the period of the last revolution, of the state of France under all its successive governments!