ot disposed to be at
the mercy of an anonymous public, the same herd of frantic characters
make a racket at the doors, and insult the electors who pass through
them.--Thanks to this itinerant throng of co-operating intruders, the
Jacobin extremists rule the sections the same as the Assembly; in the
sections as in the Assembly, they drive away or silence the moderates,
and when the hall becomes half empty or dumb, their motion is passed.
Hawked about in the vicinity, the motion is even carried off; in a
few days it makes the tour of Paris, and returns to the Assembly as an
authentic and unanimous expression of popular will.[2642]

At present, to ensure the execution of this counterfeit will, it
requires a central committee, and through a masterpiece of delusion,
Petion, the Girondist mayor, is the one who undertakes to lodge,
sanction, and organize the committee. On the 17th day of July,[2643] he
establishes in the offices belonging to the Commune, "a central
bureau of correspondence between the sections." To this a duly elected
commissioner is to bring the acts passed by his section each day, and
carry away the corresponding acts of the remaining forty-seven sections.
Naturally, these elected commissioners will hold meetings of their own,
appointing a president and secretary, and making official reports of
their proceedings in the same form as a veritable municipal council. As
they are elected to-day, and with a special mandate, it is natural that
they should consider themselves more legitimate than a municipal council
elected four or five months before them, and with a very uncertain
mandate. Installed in the town hall of Paris (Hotel-de-ville), only two
steps from the municipal council, it is natural for them to attempt to
take its place; to substitute themselves for it, they have only to cross
over to the other side of a corridor.

IV.--Vain attempts of the Girondins to put it down.

Jacobin alarm, their enthusiasm, and their program.

Thus, hatched by the Girondins, does the terrible Commune of Paris come
into being, that of August 10th, September 2nd 1792 and May 31st. 1793.
The viper has hardly left its nest before it begins to hiss. A fortnight
before the 10th of August[2644] it begins to uncoil, and the wise
statesmen who have so diligently sheltered and fed it, stand aghast at
its hideous, flattened head. Accordingly, they back away from it up to
the last hour, and strive to prevent it from biting