The Law of Suspects, passed at the same time, declared suspect every person who was of noble birth, or had held office before the Revolution, or had any connexion with an _emigre_, or could not produce a card of _civisme_ granted by the local authority, which had full discretion to refuse. Any suspect might be arrested and imprisoned until the peace or sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal. An earlier law had established in every commune an elective committee of surveillance. These bodies, better known as revolutionary committees, were charged with the enforcement of the Law of Suspects. On the 10th of October the new constitution was suspended and the government declared revolutionary until the peace. Execution of the queen. The spirit of those in power was shown by the massacres which followed on the surrender of Lyons in that month. In Paris the slaughter of distinguished victims began with the trial of Marie Antoinette, who was guillotined on the 16th. Twenty-one Girondin deputies were next brought to the bar and, with the exception of Valaze who stabbed himself, were beheaded on the last day of October, Madame Roland and other Girondins of note suffered later. In November the duke of Orleans, who had styled himself Philippe Egalite, had sat in the Convention, and had voted for the king's death, went to the scaffold. Bailly, Barnave and many others of note followed before the end of the year. As the bloody work went on the pretence of trial became more and more hollow, the chance of acquittal fainter and fainter. The Revolutionary Tribunal was a mere instrument of state. Knowing the slight foundation of its power the government deliberately sought to destroy all whose birth, political connexions or past career might mark them out as leaders of opposition. At the same time it took care to show that none was so obscure or so impotent as to be safe when its policy was to destroy.