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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: the aristocracy they had sometimes been converted into
instruments of oppression. The Revolution declared itself the
enemy of royalty and of provincial institutions at the same time;
it confounded all that had preceded it -despotic power and the
checks to its abuses - in indiscriminate hatred, and its tendency
was at once to overthrow and to centralize. This double
character of the French Revolution is a fact which has been
adroitly handled by the friends of absolute power. Can they be
accused of laboring in the cause of despotism when they are
defending that central administration which was one of the great
innovations of the Revolution? *v In this manner popularity may
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