Despotic as it was, the Government was also exceedingly disorganised, and this cause rendered it the more sanguinary and aggressive. It consisted of a number of separate and independent authorities, each striving for mastery. They were composed in part of the same men, but in part also of men whose characters, ideas, and aims were often at variance with each other. The Convention, the Jacobins, the Deputies in mission, the Committees of Public Safety and General Security, now commonly called the two Committees of Government, and finally the Commune of Paris, directed between them the affairs of France. Of all these authorities the Convention, nominally representative of France, was the weakest. It had lost the respect alike of the country and of the populace of Paris, which had so often converted it into its tool. The contempt in which it was held reacted on the position of the Mountain, which after the expulsion of the Girondists was powerless to adopt any measures that gave offence either to the Commune of Paris or to the Committee of Public Safety, and was equally powerless to reject measures which either of these bodies desired that it should adopt. The authority once possessed by the Convention was now transferred to the Committee of Public Safety, which continued to gather strength in proportion as the Mountain grew weaker. At first composed of Dantonists and seceders from the Plain, it became converted into the organ of the extreme faction which had urged on the insurrection against the Girondists. In July, Robespierre entered it with two adherents--Couthon and St. Just. In September were added Billaud-Varennes and Collot d’Herbois, who were allied with the leaders of the Commune. On special occasions this Committee consulted in common with the Committee of General Security, which, however, always occupied a position subordinate to it. It was now composed of twelve members, but the five men just named were those who directed the general action of the Government. In the persons of Robespierre and his supporters the Committee represented the Jacobins; in the persons of Billaud and Collot it represented the Commune; and so complete did the subserviency of the Montagnards become, that although the Committee was legally subject to re-election every month, they never dared to avail themselves of this opportunity for naming fresh members in the place of those who had made themselves their masters. ♦The Commune of Paris.♦