Robespierre and Marat did not become masters of the destiny of France or spill so much blood by means other than these, and they were a thousand times more destructive than all the kings together whose lineage they overthrew. In the end they fell, as all those of their kind will fall, but leaving the way open for the rise of others who, although more quietly but with a happier outcome, manage for some more time to achieve their goals, placing themselves at the peak of power, violating all social guarantees, and perpetuating the misfortune of the people who, because of a prolonged cycle of miseries and calamities, return to the same point of slavery from which they had set out to embark upon the path of liberty.
The people, after a thousand oscillations and fluctuations, the terror of anarchy over, create a poor or mediocre constitution, and then another fate awaits them. Soon enough, those who, by chance, have owed their promotion to the rule of factions try to give themselves excessive importance, affecting public esteem by means of all the externalities with which such esteem appears to be in agreement, working to persuade others that the stability of the republic depends on the adverse or favorable fate of their personal existence. This error insinuates itself with extraordinary ease and has ready success, especially among people who have not known more of a patria than ground stained by servility and slavery, more rights than the gratuitous and mean concessions of a lord, or more laws than the vain and unstable caprices of an absolute master. From the moment it is believed or feigned to be believed that the fate of liberty and the existence of the republic depend on the political existence of one single man, they find themselves on the verge of ruin. Then he will be granted all manner of condescension; it will be attempted to put aside all the goals of the citizens, of the laws and national
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interests, to fix them to the ambitious person whose aggrandizement is sought; the sacred names of patria and liberty will be defiled, and the poisonous root will be cultivated, which, with the passing of time, will bear nothing but deadly fruit.
Yes, you peoples and nations that have adopted a system of government as beneficial as it is delicate, be very much on guard against that one who tries to make himself necessary and to assign himself greater importance than granted by those who occupy public posts, the Constitution, and the laws. He will begin by flattering you, promising everything, and will end by pushing you down into servitude, superimposing himself on the laws that guarantee public liberties and, if possible, ripping from your hearts all the generous sentiments that the independence of a truly free soul might have rooted in them. Plunge those detestable monsters, those disfigured children, into the abyss of nothingness, their odious memory, weighed down by the public curse, transmitted to posterity.
Having acquired an unmerited importance and the destiny of the patria entrusted to their direction, these men soon fix their intentions on expanding their power by putting themselves in a position to prolong it indefinitely. But what means do they use? How do they obtain this from a people that has enthusiastically adopted the institutions that destroy any arbitrary regime? Here enter all the tactics, all the skill and cunning of the despots of new designation and recent origin: the protectors, liberators, directors, etc.
There is no man so incautious that he endeavors at the outset to seduce an entire people or insult them openly by clear and manifest contempt for the duties to which he has just submitted himself. This would be the sure way to frustrate any plan, and ambitious persons proceed with greater circumspection. What is it, then, that they do? They try to create a large faction, accustom the public to the transgression of the laws, and feign or stir up conspiracies.
It is impossible that a man reduced to his individual strengths could acquire either the prestige or the power necessary to superimpose himself on an entire nation. His intentions and plans will always be mistrusted by the multitude, and they will never have any noteworthy success except with the help of an organized faction that is replicated everywhere, that seizes the voice of the nation, that attacks all who oppose its interests and reduces them to silence and inaction by stirring up
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feelings of fear in those who might take on the faction by the gathering of their forces and the legitimacy of their cause. So, then, the first necessity of an ambitious person is to create a party of this kind.
It is very easy to effect this plan after a revolution lasting many years, in which the belligerent sides have calamitously harassed each other. At that point, the elements necessary to carry out the plan successfully are spread everywhere, and bringing them together does not pose a major difficulty. Many men are left with neither fortune nor employment, and as the overbearing necessity for daily subsistence is greater than all political considerations, they will have no option but to sell themselves to the first one who might purchase them. The fear that all unjust persecution brings with it demoralizes a nation, then destroys the natural generosity of characters, obliges men to lie to themselves and others, to hide their feelings and suppress their ideas through a perpetual and constant contradiction in their speech, and abjectly prostrate themselves before all those from whom, in principle, they hope or fear something. A nation, then, that for many years has traveled this dangerous path and that, moreover, finds itself impoverished because of the accumulation of properties by a small number of citizens, because of its lack of industry and because of the multitude of jobs that encourage aspirationism,1 is a field open to the intrigues of astute and enterprising ambition and offers a thousand means for the organization of audacious factions.
On these foundations, in fact, ambitious persons rise up and, going on from here, make the first attempts at arbitrariness on persons who are little known, and because of their obscurity do not attract public attention or focus the gaze of the multitude. Normally, such transgressors remain hidden, either because of the ignorance of those who tolerate them or because of the lack of means for exposing and denouncing them to public opinion. From the lowest class it goes, rising gradually, battering the resistance that might be opposed, taking breaks that inspire some confidence, make anxiety disappear, and make citizens conceive the possibility of their security being trampled without protests or in spite of them. Here is where the faction comes in to support the one who pays it. It makes accusations that it repeats ceaselessly, exempting itself from ever proving them, feigning ignorance of any response to them, and
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suggesting gratuitously, although constantly, that those targets of persecution are criminals. Sometimes it tramples those who demand social guarantees, punishing them for sedition. Other times it attacks with prohibited weapons, inserting itself even into the sacredness of the domestic sanctuary in order to make their weaknesses public and obvious. If they are not found there, it does not matter; they are suggested, and with this it gets out of its difficulty. In this way, public attention is distracted from the matter at hand; men of probity and merit are obliged to abandon the field; terror imprints itself on almost all citizens, isolating them in their homes; the consolidation of efforts that would make factions tremble is impeded, and an entire people is dominated, as a whole province gives itself over to a gang of bandits. Thus is formed a phantom of public opinion, much clamor is put forward, a great noise is made, and new levels of power are acquired, which lead to the highest levels, and these to the desired end.
One of the means that ambition has most commonly employed and that has never lost its effectiveness despite the frequency with which it has been used is feigning conspiracies or stirring them up so that they serve as a pretext for the expansion and augmentation of the power it seeks. People who have obtained their liberty and independence at the price of blood are very easy to plunge once more into slavery by using their very desire to prevent those evils. Of course, it begins by making a pretext of the existence of powerful and terrible conspiracies. It makes great mystery of them, sparing no effort to make this conviction well known and popular. When this has been achieved, it ventures the distinction between the good of the republic and observance of the laws. Then it goes on to maintain that the former should be preferred to the latter. It assures that the laws are theories