is promptly
transformed into direct authority.--Voting alone, or almost alone,
in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the
Jacobins easily choose the municipal body and the officers of the
National Guard.[2458] After this, through the mayor, who is their tool
or their accomplice, they have the legal right to launch or arrest the
entire armed force and they avail themselves of it.--Two obstacles still
stand in their way. One the one hand, however conciliatory or timid
the Directory of the district or department may be, elected as it is by
electors of the second degree, it usually contains a fair proportion
of well-informed men, comfortably off, interested in keeping order, and
less inclined than the municipality to put up with gross violations of
the law. Consequently the Jacobins denounce it to the National
Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary center of "bourgeois
aristocracy." Sometimes, as at Brest,[2459] they shamefully disobey
orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often repeated and strictly
formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they demand of the Minister
if, "placed in the cruel alternative of giving offense to the hierarchy
of powers, or of leaving the commonwealth in danger, they ought to
hesitate." Sometimes, as at Arras, they impose themselves illegally on
the Directory in session and browbeat it so insolently as to make it
a point of honor with the latter to solicit its own suspension.[2460]
Sometimes, as a Figeac, they summon an administrator to their bar, keep
him standing three-quarters of an hour, seize his papers and oblige him,
for fear of something worse, to leave the town.[2461] Sometimes, as at
Auch, they invade the Directory's chambers, seize the administrators by
the throat, pound them with their fists and clubs, drag the president
by the hair, and, after a good deal of trouble, grant him his
life.[2462]--On the other hand, the gendarmerie and the troops brought
for the suppression of riots, are always in the way of those who stir
up the rioters. Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially purify
the gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a
sergeant of the gendarmerie, "alleging that he keeps company with
none but aristocrats."[2463] At Toulouse, without mentioning the
lieutenant-colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and
oblige to leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another
district under the