would injure the
people by confiding the election of officials to them, because you would
expose them to electing men that would betray them."

--The result is that the constitutional maxims of 1789 give way to
radically opposed maxims; instead of subjecting the government to the
people, the people is made subject to the government. The hierarchy
of the ancient regime is re-established under revolutionary terms, and
henceforth all powers, much more formidable than those of the ancient
regime, cease to be delegated from the depths to the summit and will
henceforth instead be delegated from the summit to the bottom.

At the summit, a committee of twelve members, similar to the former
royal council, exercises collective royalty; nominally, authority is
divided amongst the twelve; it is, in practice, concentrated in a few
hands. Several members occupy only a subaltern position, and amongst
these, Barere, who, official secretary and mouthpiece, is always ready
to make a speech or draft an editorial; others, with special functions,
Jean Bon St. Andre, Lindet, and above all, Prieur de la Cote d'Or and
Carnot, confine themselves each to his particular department, navy, war,
supplies, with blank signatures, for which they give in return their
signatures to the political leaders; the latter, called "the statesmen,"
Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes,
are the real rulers providing overall direction. It is true that their
mandate has to be renewed monthly; but this is a certainty, for, in the
present state of the Convention, its vote, required beforehand, becomes
an almost vain formality. More submissive than the parliament of Louis
XIV., the Convention adopts, without discussion, the decrees which the
Committee of Public Safety present to it ready made. It is no more than
a registry-office, and scarcely that, for it has relinquished its right
of appointing its own committees, that office being assigned to the
Committee of Public Safety; it votes as a whole all lists of names which
the Committee send in.[11119] Naturally, none but the creatures of the
latter and the faithful are inscribed; thus, the whole legislative and
parliamentary power belongs to it.--As to executive and administrative
power, the ministers have become mere clerks of the Committee of Public
Safety; "they come every day at specified hours to receive its orders
and acts;[11120] "they submit to it "the list with explanations, of a