It is true that it professes also to be _social_.
So far as it is democratic, it, has an unlimited faith in mankind.
So far as it is social, it places it beneath the mud.
Are political rights under discussion? Is a legislator to be chosen? Oh!
then the people possess science by instinct: they are gifted with an
admirable tact; _their will is always right_; the general _will cannot
err_. Suffrage cannot be too _universal_. Nobody is under any
responsibility to society. The will and the capacity to choose well are
taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an
age of enlightenment? What! are the people to be always kept in leading
strings? Have they not acquired their rights at the cost of effort and
sacrifice? Have they not given sufficient proof of intelligence and
wisdom? Are they not arrived at maturity? Are they not in a state to
judge for themselves? Do they not know their own interest? Is there a
man or a class who would dare to claim the right of putting himself in
the place of the people, of deciding and of acting for them? No, no; the
people would be _free_, and they shall be so. They wish to conduct their
own affairs, and they shall do so.
But when once the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of
his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness,
nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence.
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