And against sedition from within as well as conquest from without a nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government, which provides the indispensable instruments of common action. Let it fail or falter and the great majority, undecided about what to do, lukewarm and busy elsewhere, ceases to be a corps and disintegrates into dust. Of the two governments around which the nation might have rallied, the first one, after July 14, 1789, lies prostrate on the ground where it slowly crumbles away. Now its ghost, which returns, is still more odious because it brings with it the same senseless abuses and intolerable burdens, and, in addition to these, a yelping pack of claimants and recriminators. After 1790 it appears on the frontier more arbitrary than ever at the head of a coming invasion of angry émigrés and grasping foreigners.--The other government, that just constructed by the Constituent Assembly, is so badly put together that the majority cannot use it. It is not adapted to its hand; no political instrument at once so ponderous and so helpless was ever seen. An enormous effort is needed to set it in motion; every citizen is obliged to give it about two days labor per week.[1247] Thus laboriously started but half in motion, it poorly meets the various tasks imposed upon it--the collection of taxes, public order in the streets, the circulation of supplies, and security for consciences, lives and property. Toppled over by its own action, another rises out of it, illegal and serviceable, which takes its place and stands.--In a great centralized state whoever possesses the head possesses the body. By virtue of being led, the French have contracted the habit of letting themselves be led.[1248] People in the provinces involuntarily turn their eyes to the capital, and, on a crisis occurring, run out to stop the mailman to know what government happens to have fallen, the majority accepts or submits to it.--Because, in the first place, most of the isolated groups which would like to overthrow it dare not engage in the struggle: it seems too strong; through inveterate routine they imagine behind it that great, distant France which, under its impulsion, will crush them with its mass.[1249] In the second place, should a few isolated groups undertake to overthrow it, they are not in a condition to keep up the struggle: it is too strong. They are, indeed, not yet organized while it is fully so, owing to the docile set of officials inherited from the government overthrown. Under monarchy or republic the government clerk comes to his office regularly every morning to dispatch the orders transmitted to him.[1250] Under monarchy or republic the policeman daily makes his round to arrest those against who he has a warrant. So long as instructions come from above in the hierarchical order of things, they are obeyed. From one end of the territory to the other, therefore, the