It stifles conspiracy in its very first movements. Their
power is absolute and uncontrollable. No stand can be made against it.
These republics are besides so disconnected, that very little
intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained beyond their own
bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant
correspondence, and who give what color they please to such facts as
they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspondence.
They all have some sort of communication, just as much or as little as
they please, with the centre. By this confinement of all communication
to the ruling faction, any combination, grounded on the abuses and
discontents in one, scarcely can reach the other. There is not one man,
in any one place, to head them. The old government had so much
abstracted the nobility from the cultivation of provincial interest,
that no man in France exists, whose power, credit, or consequence
extends to two districts, or who is capable of uniting them in any
design, even if any man could assemble ten men together without being
sure of a speedy lodging in a prison.
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