Citizen Fontaine by Ciara Griffiths ‘Government must depend for its Efficiency either on Force or Opinion.’  The Colonist’s Advocate, VII. (Feb 1. 1770) I am a complete fool. Nobody had come to break down the door yet, but I was certain they would. I waited for them, curled up on the bed like a child awaiting punishment, sweating yet somehow shivering at the same time. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract lay open beside me. ‘Whoever refuses to obey the General Will shall be compelled to do so by the entire body; this means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free.’ The year was 1793, the second year of the Republic. I vividly remember the excitement our Revolution brought. I was young and full of philosophical ambition then. After years of injustice, we had risen up. We seized the Bastille, a relic of the ancien régime, for this was a new era. By the General Will of the people, we would form a new government, a new society. A new France. There would be no going back.…