sumed him like a raging sickness, we must recall those tillers of the soil, worked like galley-slaves on the high-roads, those trembling peasants who ate their daily bread with the terror of criminals, those poor Bretons who considered "hanging as a deliverance from worse evils." We must recall these wrongs here; for the blackest days of the Revolution, the sanguinary days of September, were approaching with giant strides.
Such were the elements of the new Commune before which the National Assembly faded. The country, however, was once more appealed to, and this time without the distinction of active and passive citizens: which had been an oligarchical device of the Constituent Assembly, whereby the majority of the French nation were excluded from the suffrage, on the ground that those who did not pay a certain minimum in taxes were not entitled to the franchise. Meanwhile, the Girondins, with some modifications in the Cabinet, had been triumphantly recalled to office. Danton became Minister of Justice, the geometrician Monge of the Marine, and Pache (afterwards nicknamed "the Tartuffe of Politics" by Roland's wife) was made Minister of War at the recommendation of her husband, who, on taking office, began by renewing the staff in most of the Government offices. Champagneux he made General Secretary, the excellent Bosc Postmaster-General, and placed Lanthenas in the Arts and Science Department. Each Minister had very large secret funds placed at his disposal, employed mostly in issuing papers, circulars, and placards of all kinds, the walls being made the great vehicle of political education. Louvet, author of Faublas, became the editor of Roland's paper, the Sentinel, most of the political circulars for which were composed by Madame Roland herself. The Minister of the Interior, besides
