citizens, and to be considered such it was necessary to pay taxes
amounting to three days' earnings, united in the canton to nominate their
deputies and magistrates. Everything in the new plan was subject to
election, but this had several degrees. It appeared imprudent to confide
to the multitude the choice of its delegates, and illegal to exclude them
from it; this difficult question was avoided by the double election. The
active citizens of the canton named electors intrusted with nominating the
members of the national assembly, the administrators of the department,
those of the district, and the judges of tribunals; a criminal court was
established in each department, a civil court in each district, and a
police-court in each canton.

Such was the institution of the department. It remained to regulate that
of the corporation: the administration of this was confided to a general
council and a municipality, composed of members whose numbers were
proportioned to the population of the towns. The municipal officers were
named immediately by the people, and could alone authorize the employment
of the armed force. The corporation formed the first step of the
association, the kingdom formed the last; the department was intermediate
between the corporation and the state, between universal interests and
purely local interests.

The execution of this plan, which organized the sovereignty of the people,
which enabled all citizens to concur in the election of their magistrates,
and entrusted them with their own administration, and distributed them
into a machinery which, by permitting the whole state to move, preserved a
correspondence between its parts, and prevented their isolation, excited
the discontent of some provinces. The states of Languedoc and Brittany
protested against the new division of the kingdom, and on their side the
parliaments of Metz, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Toulouse rose against the