For the government may perish, but the nation never dies.

The king, the peers, and the deputies massacred, VIVE LA FRANCE!" Do you not think that such an addition to the charter would be a better safeguard for the liberty and integrity of the country than walls and bastions around Paris?
Well, then! do henceforth for administration, industry, science, literature, and art that which the charter ought to prescribe for the central government and common defence.

Instead of endeavoring to render Paris impregnable, try rather to render the loss of Paris an insignificant matter.

Instead of accumulating about one point academies, faculties, schools, and political, administrative, and judicial centres; instead of arresting intellectual development and weakening public spirit in the provinces by this fatal agglomeration,--can you not, without destroying unity, distribute social functions among places as well as among persons?
Such a system--in allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the country--would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government.
Discriminate, then, between the centralization of functions and the concentration of organs; between political unity and its material symbol.
"Oh! that is plausible; but it is impossible!"-- which means that the city of Paris does not intend to surrender its privileges, and that there it is still a question of property.
Idle talk! The country, in a state of panic which has been cleverly worked upon, has asked for fortifications.

I dare to affirm that it has abdicated its sovereignty.