While Buonaparte was unable to form an interest in the saloons, and found that even the _dames des halles_ were becoming discontented, he had upon his side the militia of the suburbs; those columns of pikemen so famous in the Revolution, whose furious and rude character added to the terrors, if not to the dignity, of his reign. Let us not be accused of a wish to depreciate honest industry, or hold up to contempt the miseries of poverty. It is not the poverty, but the ignorance and the vice of the rabble of great cities, which render them always disagreeable, and sometimes terrible. They are entitled to protection from the laws, and kindness from the government; but he who would use them as political engines, invokes the assistance of a blatant beast with a thousand heads, well furnished with fangs to tear and throats to roar, but devoid of tongues to speak reason, ears to hear it, eyes to see it, or judgment to comprehend it. For a little time after Buonaparte's return, crowds of artisans of the lowest order assembled under the windows of the Tuileries, and demanded to see the Emperor, whom, on his appearance, they greeted with shouts, as _le Grand Entrepreneur_, or general employer of the class of artisans, in language where the coarse phraseology of their rank was adorned with such flowers of rhetoric as the times of terror had coined. Latterly, the numbers of this assembly were maintained by a distribution of a few _sous_ to the shouters. However disgusted with these degrading exhibitions, Buonaparte felt he could not dispense with this species of force, and was compelled to institute a day of procession, and a solemn festival, in favour of this description of persons, who, from the mode in which they were enrolled, were termed Federates. [Sidenote: FESTIVAL OF THE FEDERATES.]