the absence of any agency, like that of the Conventional Commissioners of 1793, to enforce the control of the central Government over the local authorities, left isolated and independent by the changes of 1789. Faults enough belonged, however, to the existing political order; and the Constitutionalists, who now for the second time found themselves with a majority in the Councils, were not disposed to prolong a system which from the first had turned their majorities into derision. A party grew up around the Abbé Siéyès intent upon some change which should give France a government really representing its best elements. What the change was to be few could say; but it was known that Siéyès, who had taken a leading part in 1789, and had condemned the Constitution of 1795 from the moment when it was sketched, had elaborated a scheme which he considered exempt from every error that had vitiated its predecessors. As the first step to reform, Siéyès himself was elected to a Directorship then falling vacant. Barras attached himself to Siéyès; the three remaining Directors, who were Jacobins and popular in Paris, were forced to surrender their seats. Siéyès now only needed a soldier to carry out his plans. His first thought had turned on Joubert, but Joubert was killed at Novi. Moreau scrupled to raise his hand against the law; Bernadotte, a general distinguished both in war and in administration, declined to play a secondary part. Nor in fact was the support of Siéyès indispensable to any popular and ambitious soldier who was prepared to attack the Government. Siéyès and his friends offered the alliance of a party weighty in character and antecedents; but there were other well-known names and powerful interests at the command of an enterprising leader, and all France awaited the downfall of a Government whose action had resulted only in disorder at home and defeat abroad. [Bonaparte returns from Egypt, Oct., 1799.]