Nicholas I. (№ 416084)

Dreams of Italian Carbonarism and German Tugendbund! Republican chimeras of all high school students, lyceum students, undercooked thinkers from the university audience. They look stately and beautiful, in their essence they are pitiful and harmful! The republic is a utopia, because it is a transitional, abnormal state, ultimately always leading to a dictatorship, and through it to an absolute monarchy. There has never been such a republic in history that in difficult times would have done without the arbitrariness of one person and which would have avoided defeat and destruction when there was no efficient leader in it. The forces of the country are in concentrated power, for where everyone rules, no one rules; where there is any legislator, there is no firm law, no unity of political goals, no inner harmony. What is the consequence of all this? Anarchy!