To a department which had asked him for troops to restore order, and secure the free circulation of grain in its territory, he responded that if it was necessary to use force they must take the National Guards, and he added: “But must I counsel this step? So soon as one employs arms to execute the laws, one not only proves that he has not known how to make himself loved, but that he will never be able to do so. A constitution which is enforced by the bayonet only, is not a constitution. Other means are necessary to attach a free people to the laws that it has made.... Instruct the administrations that you direct, and if they deviate from the observation of the rules, use that sweetness which commands so easily, that persuasion which leads to the repentance of a fault often involuntary. It is so easy for a superior administration to make itself agreeable to those that it has under its surveillance that, in fact, I believe I might say it is always the fault of the former when harmony is broken.”
And he continued this doctrinal campaign throughout his ministry. For all the riot-ridden country he had but one formula. And while the people burnt châteaux, stoned priests, pillaged storehouses, waylaid and stole grain, murdered nobles, he serenely preached how easily the difficulty could be ended by applying the dogma. And he believed it with the incomparable naïveté of the theorist. If some one called his attention to the fact that the disorders increased in spite of his preaching, he was unmoved; that was the fault of the “stick in the wheel.” He was not dissatisfied that disorder should increase. It would show the need for a new shock.
Armed with his formulas, his forty years of service, and his “virtue,” Roland could see no reason why he was not adequate to the situation, and why he should not act as he saw best. The conviction of his own sufficiency made him tactless with those who were, in his judgment, less infallible than he. He assumed a pedagogic tone, a severe mien, a stiff, patronizing air towards them. He read them lectures, posed before them as impeccable. To men of experience, used to the world and to politics, as convinced as Roland of their own sincere desire for the good of France, and of the sufficiency of their own ideas, this attitude was exasperating beyond expression.