On the 21st of November, 1790, Laclos becomes secretary of the club, chief of the department of correspondence, titular editor of its journal, and the invisible, active, and permanent director of all its enterprises.
Whether actual demagogues or prompted by ambition, whether paid agents or earnest revolutionaries, each group works on its own account, both in concert, both in the same direction, and both devoted to the same undertaking, which is the conquest of power by every possible means.
V .-- Small number of Jacobins.
Sources of their power .-- They form a league .-- They have faith .-- Their unscrupulousness .-- The power of the party vested in the group which best fulfills these conditions.
At first sight their success seems doubtful, for they are in a minority, and a very small one.

At Besancon, in November, 1791, the revolutionaries of every shade of opinion and degree, whether Girondists or Montagnards, consist of about 500 or 600 out of 3,000 electors, and, in November, 1792, of not more than the same number out of 6,000 and 7,000.[1241] At Paris, in November, 1791, there are 6,700 out of more than 81,000 on the rolls; in October, 1792, there are less than 14,000 out of 160,000.[1242] At Troyes, in 1792, there are found only 400 or 500 out of 7,000 electors, and at Strasbourg the same number out of 8,000 electors.[1243] Accordingly only about one-tenth of the electoral population are revolutionaries, and if we leave out the Girondists and the semi-conservatives, the number is reduced by one-half.

Towards the end of 1792, at Besancon, scarcely more than 300 pure Jacobins are found in a population of from 25,000 to 30,000, while at Paris, out of 700,000 inhabitants only 5,000 are Jacobins.

It is certain that in the capital, where the most excitement prevails, and where more of them are found than elsewhere, never, even in a crisis and when vagabonds are paid and bandits recruited, are there more than 10,000.[1244] In a large town like Toulouse a representative of the people on missionary service wins over only about 400 persons.[1245] Counting fifty or so in each small town, twenty in each large borough, and five or six in each village, we find, on an average, but one Jacobin to fifteen electors and National Guards, while, taking the whole of France, all the Jacobins put together do not amount to 300,000.[1246]--This is a small number for the enslavement of six millions of able-bodied men, and for installing in a country of twenty-six millions inhabitants a more absolute despotism than that of an Asiatic sovereign.

Force, however, is not measured by numbers; they form a band in the midst of a crowd and, in this disorganized, inert crowd, a band that is determined to push its way like an iron wedge splitting a log.
And against sedition from within as well as conquest from without a nation may only defend itself through the activities of its government, which provides the indispensable instruments of common action.