Now, in 1799, the conditions were analogous, and even worse, for the work which the machine had to do was not less, while the human materials available for its construction were not so good.--Externally, the country was constantly at war with Europe; peace could not be secured except by great military effort, and peace was as difficult to preserve as to win. The European equilibrium had been too greatly disturbed; neighboring or rival States had suffered too much; the rancor and distrust provoked by the invading revolutionary republic were too active; these would have lasted a long time against pacified France even after she had concluded reasonable treaties. Even should she abandon a policy of propaganda and interference, return brilliant acquisitions, cease the domination of protectorates, and abandon the disguised annexation of Italy, Holland, and Switzerland, the nation was still bound to keep watch under arms. A government able to concentrate all its forces--that is to say, placed above and beyond all dispute and promptly obeyed-was indispensable, if only to remain intact and complete, to keep Belgium and the frontier of the Rhine.--Likewise internally, and for no other purpose than to restore civil order; for here, too, the outrages of the Revolution had been too great. There had been too much spoliation, too many imprisonments, exiles, and murders, too many violations of every kind, too many invasions of the rights of property and of persons, public and private. It was so much more difficult * To insure respect for persons and all private and public possessions; * to restrain at once both Royalists and Jacobins; * to restore 140,000 émigrés to their country and yet satisfy 1,200,000 possessors of national property; * to give back to 25,000,000 of orthodox Catholics the right, faculty, and means for worshipping, and yet not allow the schismatic clergy to be maltreated; * to bring face to face in the same commune the dispossessed seigneur and the peasant holders of his domain; * to compel the delegates of the Committee of Public Safety and their victims, the shooters and the shot of Vendémiaire, the Fructidorians and the Fructidorized, the Whites and the Blues of La Vendée and Brittany, to live in peace side by side,