government delegates.--Note,
especially, the most threatening of all usurpations, the way in which
this government takes justice into its hands and attributes to itself
the right of life and death over persons: not only does it break up
common criminal courts and reorganize them as it pleases, not only does
it renew and select among the purest Jacobins judges of the court of
appeals, but again, in each military division, it institutes a special
and expeditious court without appeal, composed of docile officers,
sub-officers and soldiers, which is to condemn and execute within
twenty-four hours, under pretext of emigration or priesthood, every man
who is obnoxious to the ruling factions.--As to the twenty-five millions
of subjects it has just acquired, there is no refuge: it is forbidden
even to complain. Forty-two opposition or "suspect" journals are
silenced at one stroke, their stock plundered, or their presses broken
up; three months after this, sixteen more take their turn, and, in
a year, eleven others; the proprietors, editors, publishers and
contributors, among whom are La Harpe, Fontanes, Fieve, Michaud and
Lacretelle, a large body of honorable or prominent writers, the four or
five hundred men who compose the staff of the profession, all condemned
without trial to banishment,[5180] or to imprisonment, are arrested,
take flight, conceal themselves, or keep silent. The only voice now
heard in France is the mega-phone of the government.

Naturally, the faculty of voting is as restricted as the faculty of
writing, so that the victors of Fructidor, together with the right
to speak, now also monopolize the right of electing.--Right away the
government renewed the decree which the expiring Convention had rendered
against allies or relations of emigres. moreover, it excluded all
relatives or supporters of the members of the primary assemblies, and
forbade the primary assemblies to choose any of these for electors.
Henceforth, all upright or even peaceful citizens consider themselves as
warned and stay at home. Voting is the act of a ruler, and therefore a
privilege of the new sovereigns, which is the view of it entertained
by both sovereigns and subjects:[5181] "a republican minority operating
legally must prevail against a majority influenced by royalism."[5182]
They are to see the government on election days, launching forth "in
each department its commission agents, and controlling votes by threats
and all sorts of p