Two days after, on the 22nd Prairial, Couthon presented a new law to the convention. The revolutionary tribunal had dutifully struck all those who had been pointed out to it: royalists, constitutionalists, Girondists, anarchists, and Mountain, had been all alike despatched to execution. But it did not proceed expeditiously enough to satisfy the systematic exterminators, who wished promptly, and at any cost, to get rid of all their prisoners. It still observed some forms; these were suppressed. "All tardiness," said Couthon, "is a crime, all indulgent formality a public danger; there should be no longer delay in punishing the enemies of the state than suffices to recognise them." Hitherto the prisoners had counsel; they had them no longer:--_The law furnishes patriot jurymen for the defence of calumniated patriots; it grants none to conspirators_. They tried them, at first, individually; now they tried them _en masse_. There had been some precision in the crimes, even when revolutionary; now _all the enemies of the people_ were declared guilty, and all were pronounced enemies of the people _who sought to destroy liberty by force or stratagem_. The jury before had the law to guide their determinations, they _now only had their conscience_. A single tribunal, Fouquier-Tinville and a few jurymen, were not sufficient for the increase of victims the new law threatened to bring before it; the tribunal was divided into four sections, the number of judges and juries was increased, and the public accuser had four substitutes appointed to assist him. Lastly, the deputies of the people could not before be brought to trial without a decree of the convention; but the law was now so drawn up that they could be tried on an order from the committees. The law respecting suspected persons gave rise to that of Prairial.