something to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there were a
'hundred and fifty thousand of them,' all violent enough. Unhappily, a
hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide Provinces, divided by
mutual ill-will, cannot combine. The highest Seigneurs, as we have seen,
had already emigrated,--with a view of putting France to the blush.
Neither are arms now the peculiar property of Seigneurs; but of every
mortal who has ten shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.

Besides, those starving Peasants, after all, have not four feet and
claws, that you could keep them down permanently in that manner. They
are not even of black colour; they are mere Unwashed Seigneurs; and
a Seigneur too has human bowels!--The Seigneurs did what they could;
enrolled in National Guards; fled, with shrieks, complaining to Heaven
and Earth. One Seigneur, famed Memmay of Quincey, near Vesoul, invited
all the rustics of his neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Chateau
and them with gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows
whither. (Hist. Parl. ii. 161.) Some half dozen years after, he came
back; and demonstrated that it was by accident.

Nor are the authorities idle: though unluckily, all Authorities,
Municipalities and such like, are in the uncertain transitionary state;
getting regenerated from old Monarchic to new Democratic; no Official
yet knows clearly what he is. Nevertheless, Mayors old or new do gather
Marechaussees, National Guards, Troops of the line; justice, of the most
summary sort, is not wanting. The Electoral Committee of Macon, though
but a Committee, goes the length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many
as twenty. The Prevot of Dauphine traverses the country 'with a movable
column,' with tipstaves, gallows-ropes; for gallows any tree will serve,
and suspend its culprit, or 'thirteen' culprits.