Domiciliary visits[2130] and disarmament everywhere force nobles and ecclesiastics, landed proprietors and people of culture, to abandon their homes, to seek refuge in the large towns and to emigrate,[2131] or, at least, confine themselves strictly to private life, to abstain from all propaganda, from every candidature, and from all voting.

It would be madness to be seen in so many cantons where searches end in a riot; in Burgundy and the Lyonnais, where castles are sacked, where aged gentlemen are mauled and left for dead, where M.de Guillin has just been assassinated and cut to pieces; at Marseilles, where conservative party leaders are imprisoned, where a regiment of Swiss guards under arms scarcely suffices to enforce the verdict of the court which sets them at liberty, where, if any indiscreet person opposes Jacobin resolutions his mouth is closed by being notified that he will be buried alive; at Toulon, where the Jacobins shoot down all conservatives and the regular troops, where M.de Beaucaire, captain in the navy, is killed by a shot in the back, where the club, supported by the needy, by sailors, by navvies, and "vagabond peddlers," maintains a dictatorship by right of conquest; at Brest, at Tulle, at Cahors, where at this very moment gentlemen and officers are massacred in the street.

It is not surprising that honest people turn away from the ballot-box as from a center of cut-throats .-- Nevertheless, let them come if they like; it will be easy to get rid of them.

At Aix, the assessor whose duty it is to read the electors' names is informed that "the names should be called out by an unsullied mouth, that, being an aristocrat and fanatical, he could neither speak nor vote," and, without further ceremony, they put him out of the room.[2132] The process is an admirable one for converting a minority into a majority and yet here is another, still more effective .-- At Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of "Friends of the French Constitution," have split up with the Jacobins,[2133] and, moreover, they insist on excluding from the National Guard "foreigners without property or position," the passive citizens who are admitted into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who "daily affront tranquil inhabitants." Consequently, on election day, in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants, Laurede, formerly collector of the vingtiemes,, and Brunache, a glazier, propose to exclude an intruder, a servant on wages.

The Jacobins at once rush forward.