ssembly it has had elected, or through the municipality,
which is its accomplice. If the administrations are Jacobin, it governs
through them. If they are passive, it governs alongside of them. If they
are refractory, it purges them,[3222] or breaks them up,[3223] and, to
put them down, it resorts not only to blows, but even to murder[3224]
and massacre.[3225] Between massacre and threats, all intermediaries
meet, the revolutionary seal being everywhere impressed with
inequalities of relief.

In many places, threats suffice. In regions where the temperament of
the people is cool, and where there is no resistance, it is pointless to
resort to assault and battery. What is the use is killing in a town like
Arras, for instance, where, on the day of the civic oath, the president
of the department, a prudent millionaire, stalks through the streets arm
in arm with Aunty Duchesne, who sells cookies down in a cellar, where,
on election days, the townspeople, through cowardice, elect the club
candidates under the pretense that "rascals and beggars" must be sent
off to Paris to purge the town of them![3226] It would be labor lost to
strike people who grovel so well.[3227] The faction is content to mark
them as mangy curs, to put them in pens, keep them on a leash, and to
annoy them.[3228] It posts at the entrance of the guard-room a list of
inhabitants related to an emigre; it makes domiciliary visits; it draws
up a fancied list of the suspected, on which list all that are rich are
found inscribed. It insults and disarms them; it confines them to the
town; it forbids them to go outside of it even on foot; it orders them
to present themselves daily before its committee of public safety; it
condemns them to pay their taxes for a year in twenty-four hours; it
breaks the seals of their letters; it confiscates, demolishes, and sells
their family tombs in the cemeteries. This is all in order, as is the
religious persecution,

* with the irruption into private chapels where mass is said,

* with blows with gun-stocks and the fist bestowed on the officiating
priest,

* with the obligation of orthodox parents to have their children
baptized by the schismatic cure,

* with the expulsion of nuns, and

* with the pursuit, imprisonment and transportation of unsworn
ecclesiastics.

But if the domination of the club is not always a bloody one, the
judgments are always those of an armed man, who, putting his gun to
his shoulder, aims at