at least a negative in the choice of his officers.  At present the officers are known at best to be only permissive, and on their good behavior.  In fact, there have been many instances in which they have been cashiered by their corps.  Here is a second negative on the choice of the king:  a negative as effectual, at least, as the other of the Assembly.  The soldiers know already that it has been a question, not ill received in the National Assembly, whether they ought not to have the direct choice of their officers, or some proportion of them.  When such matters are in deliberation, it is no extravagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion most favorable to their pretensions.  They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned king, whilst another army in the same country, with whom too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a free Constitution.  They will cast their eyes on the other and more permanent army:  I mean the municipal.  That corps, they well know, does actually elect its own officers.  They may not be able to discern the grounds of distinction on which they are not to elect a Marquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name?) of their own.  If this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the rights of men, why not of theirs?  They see elective justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates, elective bishops, elective municipalities, and elective commanders of the Parisian army.  Why should they alone be excluded?  Are the brave troops of France the only men in that nation who are not the fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications necessary for a commander-in-chief?  Are they paid by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of men?  They are a part of that nation themselves, and contribute to that pay.  And is not the king, is not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect the National Assembly, likewise paid?  Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary is given for the exercise of those rights.  All your resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all the works of your doctors in religion and politics, have industriously been put into their hands; and you expect that they will apply to their own case just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits your pleasure.

Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for you have industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices, and, as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government.  Therefore the moment any difference arises between your National Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have recourse to force.  Nothing else is left to you,—­or rather, you have left nothing else to yourselves.  You see, by the report of your war minister, that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion.[129] You must rule by an army; and you have