Everybody went to the polls so as to prevent the nomination of any
elector among the terrorists, who had declared that their reign was
going to return."--In the environs of Blois, a rural proprietor, the
most circumspect and most peaceable of men, notes in his journal[5147]
that "now is the time to take a personal interest.. .. Every
sound-thinking man has promised not to refuse any office tendered to
him so as to keep out the Jacobins..... It is reasonably hoped that
the largest number of the electors will not be terrorists and that the
majority of the Legislative Corps being all right, the minority of the
furious, who have only one more year of office, will give way (in 1798)
to men of probity not steeped in crime.. .. In the country, the Jacobins
have tried in vain: people of means who employed a portion of the
voters, obtained their suffrages, every proprietor wishing to have
order.... The Moderates have agreed to vote for no matter what
candidate, provided he is not a Jacobin.... Out of two hundred and
thirty electors for the department, one hundred and fifty are honest and
upright people..... They adhered to the last Constitution as to their
sole palladium, only a very few of them dreaming of re-establishing
the ancient regime." Their object is plain enough; they are for
the Constitution against the Revolution, for limited power against
discretionary power, for property against robbery, for upright men
against thieves.--"Would you prevent, say the administrative authorities
of Aube,[5148] a return to the disastrous laws of the maximum, of
monopolies, to the resurrection of paper-money?... Would you, as the
price of a blameless life, be once more humiliated, robbed, imprisoned,
tortured by the vilest, most repulsive and most shameless of tyrants?
You have only one recourse: do not fail to go to your primary assemblies
and remain there." The electors, warned by their late personal and
bloody souvenirs, rush to the polls in crowds and vote according to
their consciences, although the government through the oaths it imposes,
its official candidatures, its special commissioners, its intimidation
and its money, bears down with all its weight on the resolutions they
have taken. Although the Jacobins at Nevers, Macon and elsewhere, have
forcibly expelled officers legally elected from their bureaux, and
stained the hall with their blood,[5149] "out of 84 departments 66
elected a plurality of electors from among the anti-rep