In the mean time, he has to harmonize his coming acts with his recent declarations, which, at the first glance, seems a difficult operation: for, in the speeches he has made he has already condemned the actions he meditates. Yesterday he exaggerated the rights of the governed, even to a suppression of those of the government; to-morrow he is to exaggerate the rights of the people in power, even to suppressing those who are governed. The people, as he puts it, is the sole sovereign, and he is going to treat the people as slaves; the government, as he puts it, is a valet, and he is going to endow the government with prerogatives of a sultan. He has just denounced the slightest exercise of public authority as a crime; he is now going to punish as a crime the slightest resistance to public authority. What will justify such a volte-face and with what excuse can he repudiate the principles with which he justified his takeover?--He takes good care not to repudiate them; it would drive the already rebellious provinces to extremes; on the contrary, he proclaims them with renewed vigor, through which move the ignorant crowd, seeing the same flask always presented to it, imagines that it is always served with the same liquor, and is thus forced to drink tyranny under the label of freedom. Whatever the charlatan can do with his labels, signboards, shouting and lies for the next six months, will be done to disguise the new nostrum; so much the worse for the public if, later on, it discovers that the draught is bitter; sooner or later it must swallow it, willingly or by compulsion: for, in the interval, the instruments are being got ready to force it down the public throat.[1103]