- Treatment of the
deported on the way, in Guyana, and on the islands of Rh? and Ol?ron.
- Restoration of Jacobin feudalism.
This is the way in which the government of 1793 is brought back to
life:
The concentration of all public powers in the hands of an oligarchy, a
dictatorship exercised by about a hundred men grouped around five or
six leaders.
More independent, more despotic and less provisional than any
Committee of Public Safety, the Directory has arrogated to itself the
legal right of placing a commune in a state of siege, of introducing
troops within the constitutional circle[75] in such a way that it may,
at its discretion, violate Paris and the Legislative Corps. In this
body, mutilated by it and watched by its hireling assassins,[76] sit
the passive mutes who feel themselves "morally proscribed and half-
deported,"[77] who abandon debate, and vote with its stipendiaries and
valets.[78] As a matter of fact, the two councils have, as formerly
the Convention, become chambers "of registry" of legislative mechanism
charged with the duty of countersigning its orders. - Its sway over
the subordinate authorities is still more absolute. In forty-nine
departments, specially designated by decree, all the administrators of
departments, cantons and municipalities, all mayors, civil and
criminal judges, all justices of the peace, all elected by popular
suffrage, are dismissed en masse,[79] while the cleaning out in the
rest of France is almost as sweeping.
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