“France has constituted itself a republic for the purpose of raising all the citizens to an ever-increasing degree of morality, enlightenment, and well-being.”

Thus it is France, or an abstraction, which is to raise the French, or realities, to morality, well-being, &c.  Is it not by yielding to this strange delusion that we are led to expect everything from an energy not our own?  Is it not giving out that there is, independently of the French, a virtuous, enlightened, and rich being, who can and will bestow upon them its benefits?  Is not this supposing, and certainly very gratuitously, that there are between France and the French—­between the simple, abridged, and abstract denomination of all the individualities, and these individualities themselves—­relations as of father to son, tutor to his pupil, professor to his scholar?  I know it is often said, metaphorically, “the country is a tender mother.”  But to show the inanity of the constitutional proposition, it is only needed to show that it may be reversed, not only without inconvenience, but even with advantage.  Would it be less exact to say—­

“The French have constituted themselves a Republic, to raise France to an ever-increasing degree of morality, enlightenment, and well-being.”

Now, where is the value of an axiom where the subject and the attribute may change places without inconvenience?  Everybody understands what is meant by this—­“The mother will feed the child.”  But it would be ridiculous to say—­“The child will feed the mother.”

The Americans formed another idea of the relations of the citizens with the Government when they placed these simple words at the head of their Constitution:—­

“We, the people of the United States, for the purpose of forming a more perfect union, of establishing justice, of securing interior tranquillity, of providing for our common defence, of increasing the general well-being, and of securing the benefits of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, decree,” &c.

Here there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything.  They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy.

If I may be permitted to criticise the first words of our Constitution, I would remark, that what I complain of is something more than a mere metaphysical subtilty, as might seem at first sight.

I contend that this personification of Government has been, in past times, and will be hereafter, a fertile source of calamities and revolutions.

There is the public on one side, Government on the other, considered as two distinct beings; the latter bound to bestow upon the former, and the former having the right to claim from the latter, all imaginable human benefits.  What will be the consequence?