Uses to Destroy Liberty
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Nothing is more important for a nation that has adopted the republican system, having just emerged from a despotic regime and having won its liberty by the force of arms, than to reduce the real or apparent reasons that might allow a great mass of authority and power to accumulate in the hands of a single man, giving him prestige and ascendency over all other citizens. The downfall of popular institutions has almost always originated in measures imprudently prescribed to preserve them, not because this preservation was not seriously and effectively attempted, but rather because the natural and consistent consequences of causes requisite to the downfall cannot be altered by the will of whoever sets them in motion.
The misfortune of republics consists now, and has always consisted, in the very limited moral and physical force entrusted to the depositaries of power. This necessity that naturally comes along with the system has, as with all human institutions, its advantages and disadvantages. These should be weighed faithfully before their adoption because, once accepted, it is necessary to consider the whole before making a change that, no matter how superficial it may be or may be imagined to be, opens the door to the total change of the system and is a shock that, although superficial, if repeated, slowly undermines the foundations of the social structure until it collapses. What is more attractive than being as far as possible from the control of authority and submitting one’s own person and actions as little as possible to the vigilance and decrees of the agents of power? And in what system, if not the republican, is more space enjoyed and greater breadth given to such privileges? In none, certainly.
Well then, this inestimable good is in greater danger of being lost
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than in any other type of government if free men are not very much on the alert to anticipate every kind of aspiration that tends, if only for a few moments, to reduce their liberty and to augment with these losses the power of the one who begins by directing them and will unfailingly end by dominating them.
The love of power, innate in man and always progressive in government, is much more terrible in republics than monarchies. The one who is sure he will always rule exerts himself little to increase his authority; but the one who sees, even from afar, the end of his greatness if the immense body of the nation and irresistible force of true public opinion do not curb him, always works indefatigably to occupy the highest office if he believes it within reach, or to prolong indefinitely its duration and expand its limits if he has managed to gain it.
The means one can put into play to arrive at this end are infinite, but among the most commonplace are making oneself popular to promote one’s rise, presenting oneself as necessary so as to maintain oneself in the post, and suggesting, so as to destroy the Constitution, the impossibility or ineffectiveness of the fundamental laws.
Among a new people who because of their inexperience have never known liberty, demagogues have an immense field on which to exercise their intrigues, giving free rein to their ambition. Look for popular passions and, once found, flatter them immoderately; proclaim principles, exaggerating them to a degree that makes them odious; and arouse suspicion of all those who have not advanced this far and profess or propound principles of moderation. Here is the means of making oneself popular in a nation made up of men who, for the first time, tread the difficult and always dangerous path of liberty.
What has been done in England, in France, in Spain, and, finally, in all the former Spanish colonies, now independent nations of America? Consider carefully the first period of their revolutions. Follow, keeping in view all the steps of those who afterward have been their masters, and it will be seen, without exception, that they have owed to no other means the popularity that served as stepping-stones to the summit of power.
In fact, people who have lived under an oppressive regime do not believe themselves free when they shake off the chains that held them yoked to the cart of the despot. Rather, they want to break all the ties that unite them with authority and even the necessary dependence that
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brings with it inequality of classes, an inequality owing not to laws but to the various physical and moral faculties with which nature has endowed each man. Because of this they listen with enthusiasm and elevate to all the public offices those who preach that chimerical equality of fortunes, pleasures, and ability to be anything, and they become inflamed with passion against all those who try to cure them of this political fever, smearing them with the most denigrating nicknames, the most contemptuous insults, and the most barbarous persecutions, and forging, without noticing it, the chains that must once again reduce them to servitude.
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
