fore, had so bravely
repulsed the great Vendean army, dared to more than this; they limited
the powers of the Convention and condemned all meddling: according to
them, the sending of representatives on mission was "an usurpation, an
attack on national sovereignty;" representatives had been elected

"to make and not to execute laws, to prepare a constitution and regulate
all public powers, and not to confound these together and exercise
them all at once; to protect and maintain intermediary powers which
the people have delegated, and not to encroach upon and annihilate
them."[1152]

With still greater boldness, Montpellier enjoined all representatives
everywhere to meet at the headquarters of their respective departments,
and await the verdict of a national jury. In short, in accordance with
the very democratic creed, "nothing was visible amid the ruins of the
Convention," mutilated and degraded, but interloping "attorneys." "The
people's workmen" are summoned "to return to obedience and do justice to
the reproaches addressed to them by their legitimate master;"[1153]
the nation canceled the pay of its clerks at the capital, withdrew the
mandate they had misused, and declared them usurpers if they persisted
in not yielding up their borrowed sovereignty "to its inalienable
sovereignty."--To this stroke, which strikes deep, the "Mountain"
replies by a similar stroke; it also renders homage to principles and
falls back on the popular will. Through the sudden manufacture of an
ultra-democratic constitution, through a convocation of the primary
assemblies, and a ratification of its work by the people in these
assemblies, through the summoning of delegates to Paris, through the
assent of these converted, fascinated, or constrained delegates, it
exonerates and justifies itself, and thus deprives the Girondins of
the grievances to which they had given currency, of the axioms they had
displayed on their standards, and of the popularity they thought they
had acquired.[1154]--Henceforth, the ground their opponents had built on
sinks under their feet; the materials collected by them disintegrate
in their hands; their league dissolves before it is completed, and the
incurable weakness of the party appears in full daylight.

Firstly, in the departments, as at Paris,[1155] the party has no roots.
For the past three years all the sensible and orderly people, occupied
with their own affairs, who has no taste or interest in politics,
n