essure; local opinion here preponderates;
neighbors support each other; they would shrink from denouncing a worthy
man whom they had known for twenty years; the moral sway of honest
folks suffices for keeping down "blackguards."[3364] If the mayor is
republican, it is only in words, perhaps for self-protection, to
protect his commune, and because one must howl along with the other
wolves.---Moreover, in other bourgs, and in the small towns, the
fanatics and rascals are not sufficiently numerous to fill all the
offices, and, in order to fill the vacancies, those who are not
good Jacobins have been pushed forward or admitted into the new
administrative corps, lukewarm, indifferent, timid or needy men, who
take the place as an asylum or ask for it as a means of subsistence.
"Citizens," one of the recruits, more or less under restraint, writes
later on,[3365] "I was put on the Committee of Surveillance of Aignay by
force, and installed by force." Three or four madmen on it ruled, and
if one held any discussion with them, "it was always threats.... Always
trembling, always afraid,--that is the way I passed eight months doing
duty in that miserable place."--Finally, in medium-sized or large
towns, the dead-lock produced by collective dismissals, the pell-mell
of improvised appointments, and the sudden renewal of an entire set of
officials, threw into the administration, willingly or not, a lot of
pretended Jacobins who, at heart, are Girondists or Feuillantists,
but who, having been excessively long-winded, are assigned offices on
account of their stump-speeches, and who thenceforth sit alongside
of the worst Jacobins, in the worst employment. "Members of the Feurs
Revolutionary Committee--those who make that objection to me," wrote a
lawyer in Clermont,[3366] "are persuaded that those only who secluded
themselves, felt the Terror. They are not aware, perhaps, that nobody
felt it more than those who were compelled to execute its decrees.
Remember that the handwriting of Couthon which designated some citizen
for an office also conveyed a threat, and in case of refusal, of being
declared 'suspect,' a threat which promised in perspective the loss
of liberty and the sequestration of property! Was I free, then, to
refuse?"--Once installed, the man must act, and many of those who do
act let their repugnance be seen in spite of themselves: at best, they
cannot be got to do more than mechanical service.

"Before going to court," says