For the past six months, all sorts of executive instruments
are set up and put into operation: The Committee of Public Safety, the
Committee of General Security, ambulating proconsuls with full power,
local committees authorized to tax and imprison at will, a
revolutionary army, a revolutionary tribunal. But, for lack of
internal harmony and of central impulsion, the machine only half
works, the power not being sufficient and its action not sufficiently
sweeping and universal.
"You are too remote from the conspiracies against you," says St.
Just;[116] "it is essential that the sword of the law should
everywhere be rapidly brandished and your arm be everywhere present to
arrest crime..... The ministers confess that, beyond their first and
second subordinates, they find nothing but inertia and indifference."
-- "A similar apathy is found in all the government agents," adds
Billaud-Varennes;[117] "the secondary authorities which are the strong
points of the Revolution serve only to impede it." Decrees,
transmitted through administrative channels, arrive slowly and are
indolently applied. "You are missing that co-active force which is
the principle of being, of action, of execution.
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