Administrators and members of district assemblies, agitators of
barracks, coffee-houses, clubs and public thoroughfares, writers of
pamphlets, penny-a-liners are multiplying as fast as buzzing insects are
hatched on a sultry night. After the 14th of July thousands of jobs have
become available for released ambitions; "attorneys, notaries'
clerks, artists, merchants, shopkeepers, comedians and especially
advocates;[1417] each wants to be either an officer, a director, a
councillor, or a minister of the new reign; while journals, which are
established by dozens,[1418] form a permanent tribune, where speakers
come to court the people to their personal advantage." Philosophy,
fallen into such hands, seems to parody itself; and nothing equals its
emptiness, unless it be its mischievousness and success. Lawyers, in
the sixty assembly districts, roll out the high-sounding dogmas of the
revolutionary catechism. This or that one, passing from the question
of a party wall to the constitution of empires, becomes the improvised
legislator, so much the more inexhaustible and the more applauded as
his flow of words, showered upon his hearers, proves to them that every
capacity and every right are naturally and legitimately theirs.
"When that man opened his mouth," says a cold-blooded witness, "we were
sure of being inundated with quotations and maxims, often apropos of
street lamp posts, or of the stall of a herb-dealer. His stentorian
voice made the vaults ring; and after he had spoken for two hours,
and his breath was completely exhausted, the admiring and enthusiastic
shouts which greeted him amounted almost to frenzy. Thus the orator
fancied himself a Mirabeau, while the spectators imagined themselves the
Constituent Assembly, deciding the fate of France."
The journals and pamphlets are written in the same style. Every brain
is filled with the fumes of conceit and of big words; the leader of the
crowd is he who raves the most, and he guides the wild enthusiasm which
he increases.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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