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[ "The Revolution," vol. III., pp.446, 450, 476.]
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[ Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution révolutionnaire dans le département du Doubs," X., 472 (Speech of Briot to the five-hundred, Aug.29, 1799): "The country seeks in vain for its children; it finds the chouans, the Jacobins, the moderates, and the constitutionalists of '91 and '93, clubbists, the amnestied, fanatics, scissionists and antiscissionists; in vain does it call for republicans.">[
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[ "The Revolution," III., 427, 474.—Rocquain, "L'état de la France au 18 Brumaire," 360, 362: "Inertia or absence of the national agents. .. It would be painful to think that a lack of salary was one of the causes of the difficulty in establishing municipal administrations. In 1790, 1791, and 1792, we found our fellow-citizens emulously striving after these gratuitous offices and even proud of the disinterestedness which the law prescribed." (Report of the Directory, end of 1795.) After this date public spirit is extinguished, stifled by the Reign of Terror.—Ibid., 368, 369: "Deplorable indifference for public offices.... Out of seven town officials appointed in the commune of Laval, only one accepted, and that one the least capable. It is the same in the other communes."—Ibid., 380 (Report of the year VII): "General decline of public spirit."—Ibid., 287 (Report by Lacuée, on the 1st military division, Aisne, Eure-et-Loire, Loiret, Oise, Seine, Seine-et-Marne, (year IX): "Public spirit is dying out and is even gone.">[
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[ Rocquain, Ibid., p.27 (Report of François de Nantes, on the 8th military division,Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Basses-Alpes, and Alpes-Maratimes, year IX): "Witnesses, in some communes, did not dare furnish testimony, and, in all, the justices of the peace were afraid of making enemies and of not being re-elected. It was the same with the town officials charged with prosecutions and whom their quality as elected and temporary officials always rendered timid."—Ibid., 48: "All the customs-directors complained of the partiality of the courts. I have myself examined several cases in which the courts of Marseilles and Toulon decided against the plain text the law and with criminal partiality.—Archives nationales, series F7, Reports "on the situation, on the spirit of the public," in many hundreds of towns, cantons, and departments, from the year III to the year VIII and after.]
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[ Cf. "The Revolution," III., book IX., ch. I.—Rocquain, passim.—Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution française," III., parts 9 and 10.—Archives nationales, F7, 3250 (Letter of the commissioner of the executive directory, Fructidor 23, year VII): "Armed mobs on the road between Saint-Omer and Arras have dared fire on the diligences and rescue from the gendarmerie the drawn conscripts."—Ibid., F7, 6565. Only on Seine-inferiure, of which the following are some of the reports of the gendarmerie for one year.—Messidor, year VII, seditious mobs of conscripts and others in the cantons of Motteville and Doudeville. "What shows the perverted spirit of the communes of Gremonville and of Héronville is that none of the inhabitants will make any declaration, while it is impossible that they should not have been in the rebels' secrets."—Similar mobs in the communes of Guerville, Millebose,and in the forest of Eu: "It is stated that they have leaders, and that drilling goes on under their orders.—Vendémiarie 27, year VIII.) "Twenty-five armed brigands or drafted men in the cantons of Réauté and Bolbec have put farmers to ransom."—(Nivôse 12~ year VIII.) In the canton of Cuny another band of brigands do the same thing.—(Germinal 14, year VIII.) Twelve brigands stop the diligence between Neufchatel and Rouen; a few days after, the diligence between Rouen and Paris is stopped and three of the escort are killed.—Analogous scenes and mobs in the other departments.]