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.

In this they greatly deceive themselves, and, from the first, they are
able to see once more the Jacobins interpretation of electoral
liberty. -- At first, all the registered,[14] and especially the
"suspects," are compelled to vote, and to vote Yes; otherwise, says a
Jacobin journal,[15] "they themselves will indicate the true opinion
one ought to have of their attitudes, and no longer have reason to
complain of suspicions that are found to be so well grounded." They
come accordingly, "very humbly and very penitent." Nevertheless they
meet with a rebuff, and a cold shoulder is turned on them; they are
consigned to a corner of the room, or near the doors, and are openly
insulted. Thus received, it is clear that they will keep quiet and
not risk the slightest objection. At Macon "a few aristocrats