t, confine themselves strictly to
private life, to abstain from all propaganda, from every candidature,
and from all voting. It would be madness to be seen in so many cantons
where searches end in a riot; in Burgundy and the Lyonnais, where
castles are sacked, where aged gentlemen are mauled and left for dead,
where M. de Guillin has just been assassinated and cut to pieces; at
Marseilles, where conservative party leaders are imprisoned, where a
regiment of Swiss guards under arms scarcely suffices to enforce
the verdict of the court which sets them at liberty, where, if any
indiscreet person opposes Jacobin resolutions his mouth is closed
by being notified that he will be buried alive; at Toulon, where the
Jacobins shoot down all conservatives and the regular troops, where
M. de Beaucaire, captain in the navy, is killed by a shot in the back,
where the club, supported by the needy, by sailors, by navvies, and
"vagabond peddlers," maintains a dictatorship by right of conquest;
at Brest, at Tulle, at Cahors, where at this very moment gentlemen and
officers are massacred in the street. It is not surprising that
honest people turn away from the ballot-box as from a center of
cut-throats.--Nevertheless, let them come if they like; it will be easy
to get rid of them. At Aix, the assessor whose duty it is to read the
electors' names is informed that "the names should be called out by
an unsullied mouth, that, being an aristocrat and fanatical, he could
neither speak nor vote," and, without further ceremony, they put him
out of the room.[2132] The process is an admirable one for converting
a minority into a majority and yet here is another, still more
effective.--At Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of "Friends of
the French Constitution," have split up with the Jacobins,[2133] and,
moreover, they insist on excluding from the National Guard "foreigners
without property or position," the passive citizens who are admitted
into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who
"daily affront tranquil inhabitants." Consequently, on election day,
in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants,
Laurede, formerly collector of the vingtiemes,, and Brunache, a glazier,
propose to exclude an intruder, a servant on wages. The Jacobins at
once rush forward. Laurede is pressed back on the holy-water basin
and wounded on the head; on trying to escape he is seized by the hair,
thrown down, pierced in th