Besides, where were, and where would be now, the constitutive elements of two chambers, in a nation whose entire revolution is but a convulsion towards unity?  If the second chamber be democratic and temporary, it is but a twofold democracy with but one common impulse.  It can only serve to retard the common impulse, or destroy the unity of the public will.  If it be hereditary and aristocratic, it supposes an aristocracy pre-existent in, and acknowledged by, the state.  Where was this aristocracy in 1791?  Where is it now?  A modern historian says, “In the nobility, in the presence of social inequalities.”  But the Revolution was made against the nobility, and in order to level social hereditary inequalities.  It was to ask of the Revolution itself to make a counter-revolution.  Besides, these pretended divisions of power are always fictions; power is never really divided.  It is always here or there, in reality and in its integrity,—­it is not to be divided.  It is like the will, it is one or it is not.  If there be two chambers, it is in one of the two; the other complies or is dissolved.  If there be one chamber and a king, it is in the king or the chamber.  In the king, if he subjugates the Assembly by force, or if he buys it by corruption; in the chamber if it agitates the public mind, and intimidates the court and the army by the power of its language, and the superiority of its opinions.  Those who do not see this have no eyes.  In this soidisant balance of power there is always a controlling weight; equilibrium is a chimera.  If it did exist, it would produce mere immobility.

VII.

The Constituent Assembly had then done a good work; wise, and as durable as are the institutions of a people in travail, in an age of transition.  The constitution of ’91 had written all the truths of the times, and reduced all human reason to its epoch.  All was true in its work except royalty, which had but one wrong, which was making the monarchy the depository of its code.

We have seen that this very fault was an excess of virtue.  It receded before the deposing from the throne the family of its kings; it had the superstition of the past without having its faith, and desired to reconcile the republic and the monarchy.  It was a virtue in its intentions; it was a mistake in its results; for it is an error in politics to attempt the impossible.  Louis XVI. was the only man in the nation to whom the constituent royalty could not be confided, since it was he from whom the absolute monarchy had just been snatched:  the constitution was a shared royalty, and but a few days previously, and he had possessed it entire.  With any other person this royalty would have been a gift, for him alone it was an insult.  If Louis XVI. had been capable of this abnegation of supreme power which makes disinterested heroes (and he was one), the deposed party, of which he was the natural head, was not like him; we may expect an act of sublime disinterestedness from a virtuous man, never from a party en masse.  Party is never magnanimous; they never abdicate, they are extirpated.  Heroic acts come from the heart, and party has no heart; they have only interests and ambition.  A body is a thing of unvarying selfishness.