Republican zeal, unable to reform the solar system, had to content itself with reviving the ancient Egyptian year of twelve equal months followed by five extra days, to be called Jours Sansculottides, and with instituting a new era. The extra day of leap-years made a sixth sansculottide; these years were therefore sextile, and the period of four years ending with leap-year was to be called a Franciade. In justice to the authors of the Metric system, it must be said that they were not responsible for the Republican calendar; this was the work of a separate Committee, to whom the Convention handed over the work carried out by the Weights and Measures Committee of the Académie des Sciences. On August 1, 1793, it thanked the W. and M. Committee for their work, on the 6th it closed all the Academies, and soon after sent the great chemist Lavoisier, the principal member of the Committee, to prison and ultimately to the scaffold. Among the small number of real republicans who ruled France from Paris, there was much less enthusiasm for the metric system, intended to sweep away the memory of the old customs of weights and measures, than for the calendar, the essential part of which was a new era and the sweeping away of past superstitions, whether Pagan or Christian. In both cases one can see the power of a very small but enthusiastic, well-organised and violent minority of Jacobins against the large, but unorganised and terrorised, majority of the French people. In both cases we see the truth of Guizot’s saying: ‘Blind aversion for the past is full of falsehood and of ignorance.’[54] Footnote 54: It had been proposed in 1789 to divide France into equal departments or districts by rule and compass. Each district was to be half a degree square. It was only the refractoriness of the coast line that prevented this geographic homage to equality. The decree instituting the complete Republican system began by these words, characteristic of the times: The French era begins with the foundation of the Republic, which was on 22nd September 1792 of the vulgar era, the day when the sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, entering the sign of the Balance, at 9h. 18m. 30s. a.m., Paris Observatory time. Thus (it continued) the heavens marked the equality of days and nights at the same moment that civil and moral equality was proclaimed by the representatives of the French people as the sacred foundation of its new government. The month was divided into three decades and the days of the decimal week were numbered from one to ten. The saints whose names had been attached to the days were abolished. They were replaced by objects of republican veneration, animals, vegetables, minerals, tools, &c. Each Decadi was consecrated to an agricultural implement, the plough, the watering-pot, the pitchfork, &c. Each Quintidi was consecrated to a useful animal, the horse, the ass, the pig, the trout, &c.