Roland was elected a member of the municipal government in spite of the machinations of the aristocrats, the power of whom had been greatly weakened by the discovery in November of an extensive royalist plot. There was no doubt of the plot this time, and the reaction in favor of the Revolution was general. They left Le Clos after Roland’s election to establish themselves at Lyons, which they had made up their minds not to abandon until after its complete regeneration. So serious were the affairs of the city that the new municipality soon decided to send representatives to Paris to claim from the National Assembly the payment of the debt that the ancient régime had made her take upon herself. Roland was one of the deputies chosen to go. When he went up on this mission his wife accompanied him. The opinions on the work of the Assembly which Madame Roland carried up to Paris were not friendly. She had watched its work all through the year with critical keenness. All its actions had been tested by her pure republican standards, and wherever they fell short had been sharply condemned. She had absolutely no sympathy with delays, with compromises, with tentative measures, and she was as aggressively suspicious of the patriotism of the members as she was of the sincerity of the aristocrats. The condition of the finances troubled her. She could see no excuse for a delay in giving the country an exact statement of the public accounts. The press had not enough liberty to please her. “A people is not free,” she declared, “and cannot become so, unless each one has the means of uncovering perfidious designs, of revealing the abuses of talent as well as of authority, of exposing the opinions of everybody, of weighing the laws in the scales of universal reason. What does it matter if one is abused, providing one is innocent and always ready to prove it? This kind of war on virtue seems to me excellent; perhaps custom and security do nothing for virtue but take away its energy. It must be attacked to be strong, and it is danger which renders it sublime.” The manner in which the National Assembly did its work inspired her contempt. It was stupid, mere patch-work. “It jumps perpetually from one thing to another,” she complained, “and is behind with the things of the first importance without our knowing why.”