of
their three years' membership, all were called upon to resign at once.

But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto been in the
relations of the Legislature to the Executive. How should the brain of
the body politic, that is, the Legislature, be connected with the
hand, that is, the Executive? Obviously, so argued all French
political thinkers, the two functions were distinct and must be kept
separate. The results of this theory of the separation of powers were
clearly traceable in the course of the Revolution. When the hand had
been left almost powerless, as in 1791-2, owing to democratic jealousy
of the royal Ministry, the result had been anarchy. The supreme needs
of the State in the agonies of 1793 had rendered the hand omnipotent:
the Convention, that is, the brain, was for some time powerless before
its own instrument, the two secret committees. Experience now showed
that the brain must exercise a general control over the hand, without
unduly hampering its actions. Evidently, then, the deputies of France
must intrust the details of administration to responsible Ministers,
though some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy and a
check against royalist plots. In brief, the Committee of Public
Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, was to furnish the model
for a new body of five members, termed the Directory. This
organism, which was to give its name to the whole period 1795-1799,
was not the Ministry. There was no Ministry as we now use the term.
There were Ministers who were responsible individually for their
departments of State: but they never met for deliberation, or
communicated with the Legislature; they were only heads of
departments, who were responsible individually to the Directors. These
five men formed a powerful committee, deliberating in private on the
whole policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers. The
Directory had not, it is true, the right of initiating laws and of
arbitrary arrest which the two committees had freely exercised during
the Terror. Its dependence on the Legislature seemed also to be
guaranteed by the Directors being appointed by the two legislative
Councils; while one of the five was to vacate his office for
re-election every year. But in other respects the directorial powers
were almost as extensive as those wielded by the two secret
committees, or as those which Bonaparte was to inherit from the
Directory in 1799. They comprised the