tution was confided to them and
to an _interim_ commission of fifty members chosen equally from the
two Councils.

The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a cloak of politic
clemency. To this commission the Consuls, or rather Bonaparte--for
his will soon dominated that of Sieyes--proposed two most salutary
changes. He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from
villages suspected of royalism; and also to the exaction of taxes
levied on a progressive scale, which harassed the wealthy without
proportionately benefiting the exchequer. These two expedients,
adopted by the Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary
measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts;
but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and
their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder
of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing
severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing.
Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will
shortly appear, set himself to found his government on the support of
that vast neutral mass which was neither royalist nor Jacobin, which
hated the severities of the reds no less than the abuses of the
_ancien regime_.

While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyes was striving to body
forth the constitution which for many years had been nebulously
floating in his brain. The function of the Socratic [Greek: maieutaes]
was discharged by Boulay de la Meurthe, who with difficulty reduced
those ideas to definite shape. The new constitution was based on the
principle: "Confidence comes from below, power from above." This meant
that the people, that is, all adult males, were admitted only to the
preliminary stages of election of deputies, while the final act of
selection was to be made by higher grades or powers. The "confidence"
required of the people was to be shown not only towards their
nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most
important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of
representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult
voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of
their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune.
These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their
several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth of their
number; and the resultin