"[52]
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;"[53] 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.
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