Multitudes of
all ages and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe
that in France there are not, for various state crimes, so few as twenty
thousand[33] actually in jail,--a large proportion of people of property
in any state. If a father of a family should show any disposition to
resist or to withdraw himself from their power, his wife and children
are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages that they
keep the troops, which they force by masses (as they call it) into the
field, true to their colors.
Another of their resources is not to be forgotten. They have lately
found a way of giving a sort of ubiquity to the supreme sovereign
authority, which no monarch has been able yet to give to any
representation of his.
The commissioners of the National Convention, who are the members of the
Convention itself, and really exercise all its powers, make continual
circuits through every province, and visits to every army. There they
supersede all the ordinary authorities, civil and military, and change
and alter everything at their pleasure.
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