The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates and prejudices. They were particularly requested to _travailler_ the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances, performed the task--how well they employed the fiery passions of the mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike--is a matter of historical fact. In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of learning--namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all these measures failed in a great measure--those of violence as well as those of moral constraint--is attributable to a variety of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of a few considerations presently.