th barefaced partiality;
and again, if but one candidate was elected, and that one an adversary,
his election was invalidated. In sum, for nine years, the legislative
body, imposed on the nation by a faction, was scarcely more legitimate
than the executive power, another usurper, and which, later on, filled
up or purged its ranks. Any remedy for this defect in the electoral
machine was impossible; it was due to its internal structure, to the
very quality of its materials. At this date, even under an impartial and
strong government, the machine could not have answered its purpose,
that of deriving from the nation a body of sober-minded and respected
delegates, providing France with a parliament capable of playing its own
part, or any part whatever, in the conduct of public business.

For, suppose

* that the new governors show uncommon loyalty, energy, and vigilance,
remarkable political abnegation and administrative omnipresence,

* that the factions are contained without suppression of free speech,

* the central powers neutral yet active,

* no official candidature,

* no pressure from above,

* no constraint from below,

* the police-commissioners respectful and gendarmes protecting the
entrance to every electoral assembly,

* all proceedings regular, no disturbance inside, voting perfectly free,
the electors numerous, five or six millions of Frenchmen gathered at the
polls,

and guess what choice they will make.

After Fructidor, there is a renewal of religious persecution and of
excessive civil oppression; the brutality and unworthiness of the rulers
have doubled and diffused hatred against the men and the ideas of the
Revolution.--In Belgium, recently annexed, the regular and secular
clergy had just been proscribed in a mass,[2112] and a great rural
insurrection had broken out. The uprising had spread from the Waes
country and the ancient seignory of Malines, around Louvain as far as
Tirlemont, and afterward to Brussels, to Campine, to South Brabant, to
Flanders, to Luxembourg, in the Ardennes, and even to the frontiers of
Liege; many villages had to be burned, and many of their inhabitants
killed, and the survivors keep this in mind. In the twelve western
departments,[2113] at the beginning of the year 1800, the royalists were
masters of nearly the whole country and had control of forty thousand
armed men in regimental order; undoubtedly these were to be overcome
and disarmed, but they were not to b