local liberties, to restraint on the overwhelming activity of Paris,
to government by representatives of the sovereign people, not by the
sovereign itself. All this was absolutely opposed to the concentration
of all powers, which was the prevailing purpose since the alarm of
invasion and treason, and was easily confounded with the theory of
provincial rights and divided authority, which was dreaded as the
superlative danger of the time. That which, under the title of
Federalism, was laid to their charge, must be counted to their credit;
for it meant that, in a limited sense, they were constitutional, and
that there were degrees of power and oppression, which even a Girondin
would resist.

The Jacobins had this superiority over their fluctuating opponents,
that they fell back on a system which was simple, which was
intelligible, and which the most famous book of the previous
generation had made known to everybody. For them there was no
uncertainty, no groping, and no compromise. They intended that the
mass of the people should at all times assert and enforce their will,
over-riding all temporary powers and superseding all appointed agents.
As they had to fight the world with a divided population, they
required that all power should be concentrated in the hands of those
who acted in conformity with the popular will, and that those who
resisted at home, should be treated as enemies. They must put down
opposition as ruthlessly as they repelled invasion. The better Jacobin
would not have denied liberty, but he would have defined it
differently. For him it consisted not in the limitation, but the
composition of the governing power. He would not weaken the state by
making its action uncertain, slow, capricious, dependent on alternate
majorities and rival forces; but he would find security in power
exercised only by the whole body of the nation, united in the
enjoyment of the gifts the Revolution had bestowed on the peasant.
That was the most numerous class, the class whose interests were the
same, which was identified with the movement against privilege, which
would inevitably be true to the new institutions. They were a minority
in the Convention, but a minority representing the unity and security
of the Republic, and supported by the majority outside. They drew to
themselves not the best or the most brilliant men, but those who
devoted themselves to the use of power, not to the manipulation of
ideas. Many good administrat