Every human society requires government, that is to say an authority. No other machinery is more useful. But a machinery is useful only if it is adapted to its purpose; if not it will not work, or may even work contrary to its purpose. Hence, during its construction, one must first of all consider the magnitude of the work it has to do as well as the quality of the materials one has at one's disposal. It is very important to know beforehand whether it will lift 100 or of 100,000 kilograms, whether the pieces fitted together will be of iron or of steel, of sound or of unsound timber.—But the legislators had not taken that into consideration during the last ten years. They had set themselves up as theoreticians, and likewise as optimists, without looking at the things, or else imagining the them as they wished to have them. In the national assemblies, as well as with the public, the task was deemed easy and simple, whereas it was extraordinary and immense; for the matter in hand consisted in effecting a social revolution and in carrying on an European war. The materials were supposed to be excellent, as manageable as they were substantial, while, in fact, they were very poor, being both refractory and brittle, for these human materials consisted of the Frenchmen of 1789 and of the following years; that is to say, of exceedingly sensitive men doing each other all possible harm, inexperienced in political business, Utopians, impatient, intractable, and overexcited. Calculations had been made on these prodigiously false data; consequently, although the calculations were very exact, the results obtained were found absurd. Relying on these data, the machine had been planned, and all its parts been adjusted, assembled, and balanced. That is why the machine, irreproachable in theory, remained unsuccessful in practice: the better it appeared on paper the quicker it broke down when set up on the ground.