the worse for that of the majority, whose more numerous votes are null
because given by "fanatics."--The response of universal suffrage
thus appealed to cannot be other than that which is framed for
it. Indisputable facts are to show to what extent this response is
compulsive or perverted, what a distance there is between an official
choice and public opinion, how the elections give a contrary meaning to
popular sentiment. The departments of Deux-Sevres, Maine-et-Loire,
la Vendee, Loire-Inferieure, Morbihan, and Finistere, send only
anti-Catholic republicans to the Convention, while these same
departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery of the great
catholic and royalist insurrection. Three regicides out of four deputies
represent Lozere, where, six months later, thirty thousand peasants
are to march under the Royal white banner. Six regicides out of nine
deputies represent la Vendee, which is going to rise from one end of it
to the other in the name of the King.[3329]

IV.--Composition of the National Convention.

Number of Montagnards at the start.--Opinions and sentiments
of the deputies of the Plain.--The Gironde.--Ascendancy of
the Girondins in the Convention.--Their intellectual
character.--Their principles.--The plan of their
Constitution.--Their fanaticism.--Their sincerity, culture
and tastes.--How they differ from pure Jacobins.--How they
comprehend popular sovereignty.--Their stipulations with
regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups.--
Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary
authority in times of anarchy.

However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting
machine has not provided the expected results. At the opening of the
session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty[3330] are found to
approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as
at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the
clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers."[3331] But where
the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and
impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections.
The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be
arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly, and
one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly enter
the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have