How can one believe in the continuance of a liberty which grows from a canker? Or more exactly, how can one believe that this liberty can be born (for it still does not exist) and that from the heart of the most loathsome corruption can emerge that form of government that requires virtues more than any other. Listening to these so-called republicans talk of liberty and virtue is like seeing a faded harlot playing the virgin with blushes of rouge. ...
No doubt the French Revolution has gone through a number of different phases, yet its general character has never varied, and even at birth it showed everything it was destined to become. There was a certain inexplicable delirium, a blind impetuosity, a shameful contempt for all human decency, an immorality of a new kind that jested about its crimes, above all an insolent prostitution of reasoning and of all those words designed to express ideas of justice and virtue. ...
Can there then emerge from this bloodstained mire a durable government? It is not a valid objection that ferocious and licentious barbarian peoples have nevertheless become civilized, for no doubt ignorant barbarism has been the seedbed for a number of political systems, but clever barbarism, systematic atrocity, calculated corruption, and above all irreligion have never produced anything. Greenness leads to maturity; decay leads to nothing [la pourriture ne mène à rien].
Joseph de Maistre
Considérations sur la France
