For two years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law; a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy; a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders who devastate the national forests.

The magistrate, whose duty it is to see that the law is respected, is constantly obliged to strain the law, or allow it to be strained; if refractory, a summary blow dealt by the local Jacobins forces his legal authority to yield to their illegal dictate, so that he has to resign himself to being either their accomplice or their puppet.

Such a role is intolerable to a man of feeling or conscience.

Hence, in 1790 and 1791, nearly all the prominent and reputable men who, in 1789, had seats in the Hotels-de-villes, or held command in the National Guard, all country-gentlemen, chevaliers of St.Louis, old parliamentarians, the upper bourgeoisie and large landed-proprietors, retire into private life and renounce public functions which are no longer tenable.

Instead of offering themselves to public suffrage they avoid it, and the party of order, far from electing the magistracy, no longer even finds candidates for it.
Through an excess of precaution, its natural leaders have been legally disqualified, the principal offices, especially those of deputy and minister, being interdicted beforehand to the influential men in whom we find the little common sense gained by the French people during the past two years.-In the month of June, 1779, even after the irreconcilables had parted company with the "Right," there still remained in the Assembly about 700 members who, adhering to the constitution but determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legislature had they been re-elected.