he disinterestedness
which the law prescribed." (Report of the Directory, end of 1795.)
After this date public spirit is extinguished, stifled by the Reign
of Terror.--Ibid., 368, 369: "Deplorable indifference for public
offices.... Out of seven town officials appointed in the commune of
Laval, only one accepted, and that one the least capable. It is the same
in the other communes."--Ibid., 380 (Report of the year VII): "General
decline of public spirit."--Ibid., 287 (Report by Lacuee, on the
1st military division, Aisne, Eure-et-Loire, Loiret, Oise, Seine,
Seine-et-Marne, (year IX): "Public spirit is dying out and is even
gone."]

[Footnote 2105: Rocquain, Ibid., p.27 (Report of Francois de Nantes, on
the 8th military division,Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhone, Var, Basses-Alpes,
and Alpes-Maratimes, year IX): "Witnesses, in some communes, did not
dare furnish testimony, and, in all, the justices of the peace were
afraid of making enemies and of not being re-elected. It was the same
with the town officials charged with prosecutions and whom their quality
as elected and temporary officials always rendered timid."--Ibid., 48:
"All the customs-directors complained of the partiality of the courts. I
have myself examined several cases in which the courts of Marseilles
and Toulon decided against the plain text the law and with criminal
partiality.--Archives nationales, series F7, Reports "on the situation,
on the spirit of the public," in many hundreds of towns, cantons, and
departments, from the year III to the year VIII and after.]

[Footnote 2106: Cf. "The Revolution," III., book IX., ch. I.--Rocquain,
passim.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution francaise," III., parts 9
and 10.--Archives nationales, F7, 3250 (Letter of the commissioner of
the executive directory, Fructidor 23, year VII): "Armed mobs on the
road between Saint-Omer and Arras have dared fire on the diligences and
rescue from the gendarmerie the drawn conscripts."--Ibid., F7, 6565.
Only on Seine-inferiure, of which the following are some of the reports
of the gendarmerie for one year.--Messidor, year VII, seditious mobs of
conscripts and others in the cantons of Motteville and Doudeville.
"What shows the perverted spirit of the communes of Gremonville and of
Heronville is that none of the inhabitants will make any declaration,
while it is impossible that they should not have been in the rebels'
secrets."--Similar mobs in the communes of Guerville, Millebose,and