[119] 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;[120] "they submit to it "the list with explanations, of all the
agents" sent into the departments and abroad ; they refer to it every
minute detail; they are its scribes, merely its puppets, so
insignificant that they finally lose their title, and for the
"Commission on External Relations" a former school-master is taken, an
inept clubbist, bar-fly and the pillar of the billiard-room, scarcely
able to read the documents brought to him to sign in the caf? where he
passes his days.[121] -- Thus is the second power in the State
converted by the Committee into a squad of domestics, while the
foremost one is converted into an audience of claqueurs.
To make them do their duty, it has two hands. -- One, the right,
which seizes people unawares by the collar, is the Committee of
General Security, composed of twelve extreme Montagnards, such as
Panis, Vadier, Le Bas, Geoffroy, David, Amar, La Vicomterie, Lebon and
Ruhl, all nominated, that is to say, appointed by it, being its
confederates and subalterns.
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