ers. Three days
after their assembling together they vote, "almost unanimously,"
the preparation of a law "against the instigators of murder and
assassination." "Almost unanimously," they desire to raise a guard,
recruited in the 83 departments, against the armed bands of Paris and
the Commune. Petition is elected as their first president by "almost the
totality of suffrages." Roland who has just read his report to them, is
greeted with the "loudest" applause from nearly the "entire" Assembly.
In short they are for the ideal republic against actual brigands. This
accounts for their ranging themselves around those upright and sincere
deputies, who, in the two preceding Assemblies or alongside of them,
were the ablest defenders of both principles and humanity, around
Buzot, Lanjuinais, Petition, and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne; around Brissot,
Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, Isnard, and Condorcet; around Roland,
Louvet, Barbaroux, and the five hundred deputies of the "Plain,"[3335]
marching in one body under the leadership of the 180 Girondists who now
form the "Right."[3336]

These latter, among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the
most faith; for they have long been such, after much thought, study and
as a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are well-read educated men,
reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of Rousseau, satisfied
that absolute truth had been revealed by their masters, thoroughly
imbued with the Encyclopedie[3337] or the Contrat Social, the same as
the Puritans formerly were with the Bible.[3338] At the age when
the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general ideas,[3339] they
embraced the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of society according
to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to work as pure
logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false system of
analysis then in vogue.[3340] They have formed for themselves an idea of
man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract or minimum of
man; they have pondered over several thousands of or millions of these
abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into primordial rights,
and drawn up in anticipation the chimerical contract which is to
regulate their impossible union. There are to be no more privileges, no
more heredity, no qualifications of any kind; all are to be electors,
all eligible and all of equal members of the sovereignty; all powers are
to be of short date, and conferred through electi