tion.

The disappearance of so many of the nobles from France was not the only
abdication on the part of the conservative powers. Cowed and terrified
by the events of October, no less than three hundred members of the
Assembly sought to resign. The average attendance even at the most
important sittings was often incredibly small. Thus the Chamber came to
have little more moral authority in face of the people of Paris than had
the King himself. The people of Paris had themselves become in a day the
masters of France.

This immense change led gradually to a decisive alteration in the
position of Robespierre. He found the situation of affairs at last
falling into perfect harmony with his doctrine. Rousseau had taught him
that the people ought to be sovereign, and now the people were being
recognised as sovereign _de facto_ no less than _de jure_. Any
limitations on the new divine right united the horror of blasphemy to
the secular wickedness of political treason. After the Assembly had come
to Paris, a famishing mob in a moment of mad fury murdered an
unfortunate baker, who was suspected of keeping back bread. These
paroxysms led to the enactment of a new martial law. Robespierre spoke
vehemently against it; such a law implied a wrongful distrust of the
people. Then discussions followed as to the property qualification of an
elector. Citizens were classed as active and passive. Only those were to
have votes who paid direct taxes to the amount of three days' wages in
the year. Robespierre flung himself upon this too famous distinction
with bitter tenacity. If all men are equal, he cried, then all men
ought to have votes: if he who only pays the amount of one day's work,
has fewer rights than another who pays the amount of three days, why
should not the man who pays ten days have more rights than the other who
only pays the earnings of three days? This kind of reasoning had little
weight with the Chamber, but it made the reasoner very popular with the
throng in the galleries. Even within the Assembly, influence gradually
came to the man who had a parcel of immutable axioms and postulates, and
who was ready with a deduction and a phrase for each case as it arose.
He began to stand out like a needle of sharp rock, amid the flitting
shadows of uncertain purpose and the vapoury drift of wandering aims.

Robespierre had no social conception, and he had nothing which can be
described as a policy. He was the prophet of a sect, an