Indisputable facts are to show to what extent this response is compulsive or perverted, what a distance there is between an official choice and public opinion, how the elections give a contrary meaning to popular sentiment.

The departments of Deux-Sevres, Maine-et-Loire, la Vendee, Loire-Inferieure, Morbihan, and Finistere, send only anti-Catholic republicans to the Convention, while these same departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery of the great catholic and royalist insurrection.

Three regicides out of four deputies represent Lozere, where, six months later, thirty thousand peasants are to march under the Royal white banner.

Six regicides out of nine deputies represent la Vendee, which is going to rise from one end of it to the other in the name of the King.[3329] IV .-- Composition of the National Convention.
Number of Montagnards at the start .-- Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain .-- The Gironde .-- Ascendancy of the Girondins in the Convention .-- Their intellectual character .-- Their principles .-- The plan of their Constitution .-- Their fanaticism .-- Their sincerity, culture and tastes .-- How they differ from pure Jacobins .-- How they comprehend popular sovereignty .-- Their stipulations with regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups .-- Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy.
However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting machine has not provided the expected results.

At the opening of the session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty[3330] are found to approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers."[3331] But where the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections.
The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly, and one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly enter the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have of government business has given them some insights.