- How they seize and hold office.
Such are the subordinate sovereigns[19] who in Paris, during 14 months
dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives. - And
first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of
popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested. -
"A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,[20] well-informed or not,
claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other
citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he
thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these
measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the
assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are
accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of
the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the
mysteries of the section."
" Sometimes," says one of the leaders,[21] "we find only ten members
of the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are
enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the
section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he
is an schemer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions).
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