enforces the rest and keeps man down with its weight, along with the added weight of the others.  It is absolute, it is centralized, it works through favorites, it is backward, it makes mistakes, it has reverses:  how many causes of discontent embraced in a few words!  It is opposed by the vague and suppressed resentment of the former powers which it has dispossessed, the provincial assemblies, the parliaments, the grandees of the provinces, the old stock of nobles, who, like the Mirabeau, retain the old feudal spirit, and like Châteaubriand’s father, call the Abbé Raynal a “master-man.”  Against it is the spite of all those who imagine themselves frustrated in the distribution of offices and of favors, not only the provincial nobility who remain outside[14] while the court nobility are feasting at the royal banquet, but again the majority of the courtiers who are obliged to be content with crumbs, while the little circle of intimate favorites swallow down the large morsels.  It has against it the ill-humor of those under its direction who, seeing it play the part of Providence and providing for all, accuses it of everything, the high price of bread as well as of the decay of a highway.  It has against it the new humanity which, in the most elegant drawing-rooms, lays to its charge the maintenance of the antiquated remains of a barbarous epoch, ill-imposed, ill-apportioned and ill-collected taxes, sanguinary laws, blind prosecutions, atrocious punishments, the persecution of the Protestants, lettres-de-cachet, and prisons of State.  And I do not include its excesses, its scandals, its disasters and its disgraces, - Rosbach, the treaty of Paris, Madame du Barry, and bankruptcy. — Disgust intervenes, for everything is decidedly bad.  The spectators of the play say to each other that not only is the piece itself poor, but the theater is badly built, uncomfortable, stifling and contracted, to such a degree that, to be at one’s ease, the whole thing must be torn down and rebuilt from cellar to garret.

Just at this moment the new architects appear, with their specious arguments and their ready-made plans, proving that every great public structure, religious and moral, and all communities, cannot be otherwise than barbarous and unhealthy, since, thus far, they are built up out of bits and pieces, by degrees, and generally by fools and savages, in any event by common masons, who built aimlessly, feeling their way and devoid of principles.  As far as they are concerned, they are genuine architects, and they have principles, that is to say, Reason, Nature, and the Rights of Man, straightforward and fruitful principles which everybody can understand, all that has to be done is to draw their consequences making it possible to replace the imperfect tenements of the past with the admirable edifice of the future. — To irreverent, Epicurean and philanthropic malcontents the temptation is a great one.  They readily adopt maxims which