Had the laws of March 21 and September 5, 1793, been strictly enforced, there would, instead of 21,500 have been 45,000 of these revolutionary committees. They would have been composed of 540,000 members costing the public 591 millions per year.3356 This would have made the regular administrative body, already twice as numerous and twice as costly as under the ancient rÉgime, an extra corps expending, "simply in surveillance," one hundred millions more than the entire taxation of the country, the greatness of which had excited the people against the ancient rÉgime.—Happily, the poisonous and monstrous fungal growth was only able to achieve half its intended size; neither the Jacobin seed nor the bad atmosphere it required to make it spread could be found anywhere. "The people of the provinces," says a contemporary,3357 "are not up to the level of the Revolution; it opposes old habits and customs and the resistance of inertia to innovations which it does not understand." "The plowman is an estimable man," writes a missionary representative, "but he is generally a poor patriot."3358 Actually, there is on the one hand, less of human sediment in the departmental towns than in the great Parisian sink, and, on the other hand, the rural population, preserved from intellectual miasmas, better resists social epidemics than the urban population. Less infested with vicious adventurers, less fruitful in disordered intellects, the provinces supply a corps of inquisitors and terrorists with greater difficulty.

And first, in the thousands of communes which have less than five hundred inhabitants,3359 in many other villages of greater population, but scattered3360 and purely agricultural, especially in those in which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much; horny hands do not write every day; nobody desires to take up a pen, especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal council, to find a mayor, the two additional municipal officers, and the national agent which the law requires; in the small communes, these are the only agents of the revolutionary government, and I fancy that, in most cases, their Jacobin fervor is moderate. Municipal officer, national agent or mayor, the real peasant of that day belongs to no party, neither royalist nor republican;3361 his ideas are rare, too transient and too sluggish, to enable him to form a political opinion. All he comprehends of the Revolution is that which nettles him, or that which he sees every day around him, with his own eyes; to him '93 and '94 are and will remain "the time of bad paper (money) and great fright," and nothing more.3362 Patient in his habits., he submits to the new as he did to the ancient rÉgime, bearing the load put on his shoulders, and stooping down for fear of a heavier one. He is often mayor or national agent in spite of himself; he has been obliged to take the place and would gladly throw the burden off. For, as times go, it is onerous; if he executes decrees and orders, he is certain to make enemies; if he does not execute them, he is sure to be imprisoned; he had better remain, or go back home "Gros-Jean," as he was before. But he has no choice; the appointment being once made and confirmed, he cannot decline, nor resign, under penalty of being a "suspect;" he must be the hammer in order not to become the anvil. Whether he is a wine-grower, miller, ploughman or quarry-man, he acts reluctantly, "submitting a petition for resignation," as soon as the Terror diminishes, on the ground that "he writes badly," that "he knows nothing whatever about law and is unable to enforce it;" that "he has to support himself with his own hands;" that "he has a family to provide for, and is obliged to drive his own cart" or vehicle; in short, entreating that he "may be relieved of his charge."3363—These involuntary recruits are evidently nothing more than common laborers; if they drag along the revolutionary cart they do it like their horses, because they are pressed into the service.

Above the small communes, in the large villages possessing a revolutionary committee, and also in certain bourgs, the horses in harness often pretend to draw and do not, for fear of crushing some one.—At this epoch, a straggling village, especially when isolated, in an out-of-the-way place and on no highway, is a small world in itself, much more secluded than now-a-days, much less accessible to Parisian verbiage and outside pressure; local opinion here preponderates; neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy man whom they had known for twenty years; the moral sway of honest folks suffices for keeping down "blackguards."3364 If the mayor is republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other wolves.—-Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid or needy men, who take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence. "Citizens," one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes later on,3365 "I was put on the Committee of Surveillance of Aignay by force, and installed by force." Three or four madmen on it ruled, and if one held any discussion with them, "it was always threats.... Always trembling, always afraid,—that is the way I passed eight months doing duty in that miserable place."—Finally, in medium-sized or large towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists, but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. "Members of the Feurs Revolutionary Committee—those who make that objection to me," wrote a lawyer in Clermont,3366 "are persuaded that those only who secluded themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees. Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being declared 'suspect,' a threat which promised in perspective the loss of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to refuse?"—Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they cannot be got to do more than mechanical service.

"Before going to court," says a judge at Cambray, "I swallowed a big glass

of spirits to give me strength enough to preside."

He leaves his house with no other intention than to finish the job, and, the sentence once pronounced, to return home, shut himself up, and close his eyes and ears.

"I had to pronounce judgment according to the jury's declaration—what could I do?"3367

Nothing, but remain blind and deaf: "I drank. I tried to ignore everything, even the names of the accused."—It is plain enough that, in the local official body, there are too many agents who are weak, not zealous, without any push, unreliable, or even secretly hostile; these must be replaced by others who are energetic and reliable, and the latter must be taken wherever they can be found.3368 This reservoir in each department or district is the Jacobin nursery of the principal town; from this, they are sent into the bourgs and communes of the conscription. The central Jacobin nursery for France is in Paris, from whence they are dispatched to the towns and departments.