Mark the date of the presentation of the system of this equality of fact, entire equality.  It had been projected and decreed even at the very opening of the Dutch campaign.  If any project could encourage the want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme could disgust and banish good officers, and throw all things into confusion at the moment when order alone could give victory, it is this project, in truth, so stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their ordinary tactic.

How could they expect that there should exist any discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of officers and of generals?  Does not such a disorder destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for?  For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general.  The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory.  Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat:  but the reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, confiding in his talents, never muttered discontent instead of fighting.  Without reciprocal confidence between the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no victory, especially in a free government.

Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been recommended in some clubs and defended even in the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination,—­excesses which have rendered the French name odious to the Belgians?  Again, is it not to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that we are indebted for the revolutionary power, which has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians against France?

What did enlightened republicans think before the 10th of August, men who wished for liberty, not only for their own country, but for all Europe?  They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting the governed against the governors, in letting the people see the facility and the advantages of such insurrections.

But how can the people be led to that point?  By the example of good government established among us; by the example of order; by the care of spreading nothing but moral ideas among them:  to respect their properties and their rights; to respect their prejudices, even when we combat them:  by disinterestedness in defending the people; by a zeal to extend the spirit of liberty amongst them.