one year for deputies, for electors of the second degree, for civil arbitrators, and for judges of every kind and class. As to municipalities and also department and district administrations, these are one-half renewable annually. Every first of May the fountain-head of authority flows afresh, the people in its primary assemblies, spontaneously formed, manifesting or changing at will its staff of clerks. -- In the third place, even when installed and at work, the people may, if it pleases, become their collaborator: means are provided for "deliberating" with its deputies. The latter, on incidental questions, those of slight importance, on the ordinary business of the year, may enact laws; but on matters of general, considerable and permanent interest, they are simply to propose the laws, while, especially as regards a declaration of war, the people alone must decide. The people have a suspensive veto and, finally, a definitive veto, which they may exercise when they please. To this end, they may assemble in extraordinary session; one-fifth of the citizens who have the right to vote suffice for their convocation.
Once convoked, the vote is determined by a Yes or a No on the act proposed by the legislative body. If, at the expiration of forty days, one-tenth of the primary assemblies in one-half of the departments vote No, there is a suspensive veto. In that event all the primary assemblies of the Republic must be convoked and if the majority still decides in the negative, that is a definitive veto.
The same formalities govern a revision of the established constitution. -- In all this, the plan of the "Montagnards" is a further advance on that of the Girondins; never was so insignificant a part assigned to the rulers nor so extensive a part to the governed.
The Jacobins profess a respect for the popular initiative which amounts to a scruple.[9] According to them the sovereign people should be sovereign de facto, permanently, and without interregnum, allowed to interfere in all serious affairs, and not only possess the right, but the faculty, of imposing its will on its mandatories. -- All the stronger is the reason for referring to it the institutions now being prepared for it. Hence the Convention, after the parade is over, convokes the primary assemblies and submits to them for ratification the Constitutional bill has been drawn up.
III.
Primary Assemblies. - Proportion of Absentees. -- Unanimity of the voters. -- Their motives for accepting the Constitution. -- Pressure brought to bear on voters. - Choice of Delegates.
The ratification will, undoubtedly, be approved. Everything has been combined beforehand to secure it, also to secure it as wanted, apparently spontaneously, and almost unanimously. -- The primary assemblies, indeed, are by no means fully attended; only one-half, or a quarter, or a third of the electors in the cities deposit their votes, while in the rural districts there is only a quarter, and less.[10] Repelled by their experience with previous convocations the electors know too well the nature of these assemblies; how the Jacobin faction rules them, how it manages the electoral comedy, with what violence and threats it reduces all dissidents to voting either as figurants or claqueurs. From four to five million of electors prefer to hold aloof and stay at home as usual. Nevertheless the organization of most of the assemblies takes place, amounting to some six or seven thousand. This is accounted for by the fact that each canton contains its small group of Jacobins. Next to these come the simple-minded who still believe in official declarations; in their eyes a constitution which guarantees private rights and institutes public liberties must be accepted, no matter what hand may present it to them. And all the more readily because the usurpers offer to resign; in effect, the Convention has just solemnly declared that once the Constitution is adopted, the people shall again be convoked to elect "a new national assembly . . . a new representative body invested with a later and more immediate trust,"[11] which will allow electors, if they are so disposed, to return honest deputies and exclude the knaves who now rule. Thereupon even the insurgent departments, the mass of the Girondins population, after a good deal of hesitation, resign themselves at last to voting for it.[12] This is done at Lyons and in the department of Calvados only on the 30th of July. A number of Constitutionalists or neutrals have done the same thing, some through a horror of civil war and a spirit of conciliation, and others through fear of persecution and of being taxed with royalism;[13] one conception more: through docility they may perhaps succeed in depriving the "Mountain" of all pretext for violence.