The Peoples Government

aw; their turn to impose their absolute will; their turn to define treason, and to inflict death as a punishment. THE TRANSFER OF POWER TO THE PEOPLE The fact of this reversal of positions is not, however, so significant for the welfare of the community as it may at first appear. The substance of the State was not essentially altered by a mere change of masters. Supreme power, which had previously been exclusively in the hands of monarchs, aided by their counselors, was, indeed, transferredto the hands of the people, or of those who were supposed to represent them; but the change was far less a transformation of the State than a mere alteration in the control of its power to exact obedience. Call the roll of the persons who, after the Revolution in France, became the chief depositories of power, and ask the question, "In what sense was its exercise ameliorated?" and you are immediately impressed by the fact that authority, in any defensible sense, had made no substantial progress in defining its essential nature, as distinguished from mere power to compel obedience. The populace of Paris; Brissot, with his policy of a universal "war on kings"; Danton, and the massacres of the nobility by the Commune; Robespierre, and the "culte de la Raison"; the impersonal reign of War and Famine in the midst of universal terror; the Directory; the Consulate; Napoleon Bonaparte?liberator, emperor,and conqueror of Europe?were these less tyrannical than the King they had supe...