It remained to frame a legislative power as a counterpoise to this executive power, so concentrated and so strong.—In organized and tolerably sound communities this point is reached through an elective parliament which represents the public will; it represents this because it is a copy, a faithful reduction of that will on a small scale; it is so organized as to present a loyal and proportionate expression of diverse controlling opinions. In this case, the electoral selection has worked well; one superior right, that of election, has been respected, or, in other words, the passions excited have not proved too strong, which is owing to the most important interests not having proved too divergent.—Unfortunately, in France, rent asunder and discordant, all the most important interests were in sharp antagonism; the passions brought into play, consequently, were furious; no right was respected, and least of all that of election; hence the electoral test worked badly, and no elected parliament was or could be a veritable expression of the public will. Since 1791, the elections, violated and deserted, had brought intruders only to the legislative benches, under the name of mandatories. These were endured for lack of better; but nobody had any confidence in them, and nobody showed them any deference. People knew how they had been elected and how little their title was worth. Through inertness, fear, or disgust, the great majority of electors had not voted, while the voters at the polls fought among themselves, the strongest or least scrupulous expelling or constraining the rest. During the last three years of the Directory the electoral assembly was often divided; each faction elected its own deputy and protested against the election of the other. The government then chose between the two candidates elected, arbitrarily and always with barefaced partiality; and again, if but one candidate was elected, and that one an adversary, his election was invalidated. In sum, for nine years, the legislative body, imposed on the nation by a faction, was scarcely more legitimate than the executive power, another usurper, and which, later on, filled up or purged its ranks. Any remedy for this defect in the electoral machine was impossible; it was due to its internal structure, to the very quality of its materials. At this date, even under an impartial and strong government, the machine could not have answered its purpose, that of deriving from the nation a body of sober-minded and respected delegates, providing France with a parliament capable of playing its own part, or any part whatever, in the conduct of public business.

For, suppose

* that the new governors show uncommon loyalty, energy, and vigilance, remarkable political abnegation and administrative omnipresence,

* that the factions are contained without suppression of free speech,

* the central powers neutral yet active,

* no official candidature,

* no pressure from above,

* no constraint from below,

* the police-commissioners respectful and gendarmes protecting the entrance to every electoral assembly,

* all proceedings regular, no disturbance inside, voting perfectly free, the electors numerous, five or six millions of Frenchmen gathered at the polls,

and guess what choice they will make.

After Fructidor, there is a renewal of religious persecution and of excessive civil oppression; the brutality and unworthiness of the rulers have doubled and diffused hatred against the men and the ideas of the Revolution.—In Belgium, recently annexed, the regular and secular clergy had just been proscribed in a mass,2112 and a great rural insurrection had broken out. The uprising had spread from the Waes country and the ancient seignory of Malines, around Louvain as far as Tirlemont, and afterward to Brussels, to Campine, to South Brabant, to Flanders, to Luxembourg, in the Ardennes, and even to the frontiers of LiÈge; many villages had to be burned, and many of their inhabitants killed, and the survivors keep this in mind. In the twelve western departments,2113 at the beginning of the year 1800, the royalists were masters of nearly the whole country and had control of forty thousand armed men in regimental order; undoubtedly these were to be overcome and disarmed, but they were not to be deprived of their opinions, as of their guns.—In the month of August, 1799,2114 sixteen thousand insurgents in Haute Garonne and the six neighboring departments, led by Count de Paulo, had unfurled the royal white flag; one of the cantons, Cadours, "had risen almost entirely;" a certain town, Muret, sent all its able-bodied men. They had penetrated even to the outskirts of Toulouse, and several engagements, including a pitched battle, were necessary to subdue them. On one occasion, at MontrÉjean, 2000 were slain or drowned. The peasants fought with fury, "a fury that bordered on frenzy;" "some were heard to exclaim with their last breath, 'Vive le Roi!' and others were cut to pieces rather than shout, 'Vive la RÉpublique!'"—From Marseilles to Lyons the revolt lasted five years on both banks of the RhÔne, under the form of brigandage; the royalist bands, increased by refractory conscripts and favored by the inhabitants whom they spared, killed or pillaged the agents of the republic and the buyers of national possessions.2115 There were thus, in more than thirty departments, intermittent and scattered VendÉes. In all the Catholic departments there was a latent VendÉe. Had the elections been free during this state of exasperation it is probable that one-half of France would have voted for men of the ancient rÉgime—Catholics, Royalists, or, at least, the Monarchists of 1790.

Let the reader imagine facing this party, in the same chamber, about an equal number of representatives elected by the other party; the only ones it could select, its notables, that is to say, the survivors of preceding assemblies, probably Constitutionalists of the year IV and the year V, Conventionalists of the Plain and of the Feuillants of 1792, from Lafayette and Dumolard to Daunou, Thibaudeau and GrÉgoire, among them Girondists and a few Montagnards, BarÈre,2116 with others, all of them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to traditions. To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two inimical doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems of opinions and passions, two contradictory modes of conceiving sovereignty, law, society, the State, property, religion, the Church, the ancient rÉgime, the Revolution, the present and the past; it is civil war transferred from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the Right would like to see the First Consul a Monck, which would lead to his becoming a Cromwell; for his power depends entirely on his credit with the army, then the sovereign force; at this date the army is still republican, at least in feeling if not intelligently, imbued with Jacobin prejudices, attached to revolutionary interests, and hence blindly hostile to aristocrats, kings, and priests.2117 At the first threat of a monarchical and Catholic restoration it will demand of him an eighteenth Fructidor2118; otherwise, some Jacobin general, Jourdan, Bernadotte, or Augereau, will make one without him, against him, and they fall back into the rut from which they wished to escape, into the fatal circle of revolutions and coups d'État.