The administrative body at Paris. - Composition of the group out of
which it was recruited. - Deterioration of this group. - Weeding-out
of the Section Assemblies. - Weeding out of the popular clubs. -
Pressure of the government.
To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and
agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and
we have seen the composition of the recruits,[1]
* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree,
especially the lowest,
* the castaways,
* envious and resentful subordinates,
* small shopkeepers in debt,
* the migrating, high-living workers,
* barflies,
* vagrants,
* men of the gutters,
* street-walkers,
- in short, every species of "anti-social vermin," male and
female,[2] including a few honest crack-brains into which the
fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far the
largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the
established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only
because it provides food for their appetites. - In Paris, they number
five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same
number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,[3]
levelers and terrorists, "some because they are poor, others because
they have broken off the habit of working at their trade," furious
with "the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the
hoarders of objects of prime necessity.
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