with a Te Deum. Seventeen bishops were sent to
the Convention, and thirty-one priests. Tom Paine, though he could not
speak French, was elected in four places. Two-thirds were new members,
who had not sat in the previous assemblies. Four-fifths of the primary
electors abstained.

The Convention began its sittings, September 20, in the Riding School,
where the Legislative had met; in the month of May 1793 it adjourned
to the Tuileries. There were about fifty or sixty Jacobins. The
majority, without being Girondins, were prepared generally to follow,
if the Girondins led. Petion was at once elected president, and all
the six secretaries were on the same side. The victory of the Gironde
was complete. It had the game in its hands. The party had little
cohesion and, in spite of the whispered counsels of Sieyes, no sort of
tactics. Excepting Buzot, and perhaps Vergniaud, they scarcely deserve
the interest they have excited in later literature, for they had no
principles. Embarrassed by the helpless condition of the Legislative,
they made no resistance to the massacres. When Roland, Condorcet,
Gorsas, spoke of them in public, they described them as a dreadful
necessity, an act of rude but inevitable justice. Roland, Minister of
the Interior, had some of the promoters to dine with him while the
bloodshed was going on, and he proposed to draw a decent veil over
what had passed. Such men were unfit to compete with Robespierre in
ruthless villainy, but they were equally unfit to denounce and to
expose him. That was the policy which they attempted, and by which
they perished.

The movement towards a permanent Republic was not pronounced, beyond
the barrier of Paris. The constituencies made no demand for it, except
the Jura. Two others declared against monarchy. Thirty-four
departments gave no instructions; thirty-six gave general or unlimited
powers. Three, including Paris, required that constitutional decrees
should be submitted to popular ratification. The first act of the
Convention was to adopt that new principle. By a unanimous vote, on
the motion of Danton, they decided that the Constitution must be
accepted by the nation in its primary assemblies. But some weeks
later, October 16, when Manuel proposed to consult the people on the
question of a Republic, the Convention refused. The abolition of
monarchy was carried, September 21, without any discussion; for the
history of kings, said Bishop Gregoire, is the martyrology of n