For a moment the conflict of parties seemed at an end. None could presume to challenge the authority of the Committee of Public Safety, and in the committee none disputed the leadership of Robespierre. Robespierre was at last free to establish the republic of virtue. On the 7th of May he persuaded the Convention to decree that the French people acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. On the 4th of June he was elected president of the Convention, and from that time forward he appeared to be dictator of France. On the 8th the festival of the Supreme Being was solemnized, Robespierre acting as pontiff amid the outward deference and secret jeers of his colleagues. But Robespierre knew what a gulf parted him from almost all his countrymen. He knew that he could be safe only by keeping power and powerful only by making the Terror more stringent. Two days after the festival his friend Couthon presented the crowning law of the Terror, known as the Law of 22 Prairial. As the Revolutionary Tribunal was said to be paralysed by forms and delays, this law abolished the defence of prisoners by counsel and the examination of witnesses. Thenceforward the impressions of judges and jurors were to decide the fate of the accused. For all offences the penalty was to be death. The leave of the Convention was no longer required for the arrest of a member. In spite of some murmurs even this law was adopted. Its effect was fearful. The Revolutionary Tribunal had hitherto pronounced 1200 death sentences. In the next six weeks it pronounced 1400. With Robespierre's approval St Just sketched at this time the plan of an ideal society in which every man should have just enough land to maintain him; in which domestic life should be regulated by law and all children over seven years should be educated by the state. Pending this regeneration of society St Just advised the rule of a dictator. The Revolutionary War. Republican successes.