colour of providing for the independence of each of their cities.
When the members who compose these new bodies of cantons, communes, and departments, ar|rangements purposely produced through the me|dium of confusion, begin to act, they will find them|selves, in a great measure, strangers to one another. The electors and elected throughout, especially in the rural cantons, will be frequently without any civil habitudes or connections, or any of that natural dis|cipline which is the soul of a true republic. Magi|strates and collectors of revenue are now no longer acquainted with their districts, bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their parishes. These new colonies of the rights of men bear a strong resem|blance to that sort of military colonies which Ta|citus has observed upon in the declining policy of Rome. In better and wiser days (whatever course they took with foreign nations) they were careful to make the elements of a methodical subordination and settlement to be coeval; and even to lay the foundations of civil discipline in the military* 1.1. But, when all the good arts had fallen into ruin, they proceeded, as your assembly does, upon the equality of men, and with as little judgment, and as little care for those things which make a republic toler|able
