Have not the
Jacobins irresistible arguments, without taking blows into account? At
Paris,[2135] Marat in three successive numbers of his paper has just
denounced by name "the rascals and thieves" who canvass for electoral
nominations, not the nobles and priests but ordinary citizens, lawyers,
architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers
and other artisans, each name being given in full with the professions,
addresses and one of the following qualifications, "hypocrite (tartufe),
immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat," not to mention
others that I cannot write down. It must be noted that this slanderous
list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village
in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the
local dub, which enables us to judge whether the struggle between it
and its adversaries is a fair one.-As to rural electors, it has suitable
means for persuading them, especially in the innumerable cantons ravaged
or threatened by the jacqueries, (country-riots) or, for example, in
Correze, where "the whole department is smattered with insurrections
and devastation's, and where nobody talks of anything but of hanging the
officers who serve papers."[2136] Through-out the electoral operations
the sittings of the dub are permanent; "its electors are incessantly
summoned to its meetings;" at each of these "the main question is the
destruction of fish-ponds and rentals, their principal speakers summing
it all up by saying that none ought to be paid." The majority of
electors, composed of rustics, are found to be sensitive to speeches
like this; all its candidates are obliged to express themselves against
fishponds and rentals; its deputies and the public prosecuting attorney
are nominated on this profession of faith; in other words, to be
elected, the Jacobins promise to greedy tenants the incomes and property
of their owners.--We already see in the proceedings by which they secure
one-third of the offices in 1791 the germ of the methods by which they
will secure the whole of them in 1792; in this first electoral campaign
their acts indicate not merely their maxims and policy but, again, the
condition, education, spirit and character of the men whom they place in
power locally as well as at the capital.

*****

[Footnote 2101: Law of May 28, 29, 1791 (according to official
statements, the total of active citizens amounted to 4,288,360).--L