Let me describe the confusion of parties through which Danton had to wade in his progress towards the re-establishment of liberty and of order. As for the Convention itself, nominally the master, it was practically of no power. It chose to follow now one now another tendency or man; to be influenced by fear at this moment, by policy at that, and continually by the Revolutionary formulæ. In a word, it was led. Like every large assembly, it lacked initiative. Above it and struggling for power were these: First, the committees, that of Public Safety, and its servant, that of General Security—the Government and the police. It was Danton, as we know, who desired to make the committees supreme, who had raised them as the institution, the central government. But by this time they were a despotism beyond the reach of the checks which Danton had always desired. To save so mighty an engine from the dangers of ambition, he had resigned in July. His sacrifice or lethargy did not suffice. The Committee which had once been Danton was now the Triumvirate—Robespierre, Couthon, St. Just. It pursued their personal objects, it maintained by the Terror their personal creed. Still Danton did not desire to destroy it as a system. He wished to modify its methods and to change its personnel, to let it merge gradually into the peaceable and orderly government for which the Revolution and the Republic had been made. By a strange necessity, the workers, the men who were most like Danton in spirit, the practical organisers on the Committee, such as Carnot, Prieur, and Lindet, could not help defending it in every particular. They knew the necessity of staying at their post, and they feared, with some justice, that if the Robespierrian faction was eliminated their work might be suddenly checked. It was because they were practical and short-sighted that they were opposed to the practical but far-sighted policy of Danton. They feared that with the cessation of the Terror the armies would lack recruits, the commissariat provisions, the treasury its taxes.