All this affords no assurance of steadfast loyalty and practical adhesion.

The Girondin deputies scattered through the provinces relied upon each department arousing itself at their summons and forming a republican Vendee against the "Mountain:" nowhere do they find anything beyond mild approval and speculative hopes.
There remains to support them the elite of the republican party, the scholars and lovers of literature, who are honest and sincere thinkers, who, worked upon by the current dogmas, have accepted the philosophical catechism literally and seriously.

Elected judges, or department, district, and city administrators, commanders and officers of the National Guard, presidents and secretaries of sections, they occupy most of the places conferred by local authority, and hence their almost unanimous protest seems at first to be the voice of France.

In reality, it is only the despairing cry of a group of staff-officers without an army.

Chosen under the electoral pressure with which we are familiar, they possess rank, office and titles, but no credit or influence; they are supported only by those whom they really represent, that is to say, those who elected them, a tenth of the population, and forming a sectarian minority.