For a moment expectation prevailed that this recognition of a Supreme Being would be followed by a revival of sentiments of humanity. The case proved otherwise. The festival was barely over when the Convention, in accordance with a project drawn up by Robespierre, reorganised the revolutionary court (June 10). The calling of witnesses, hearing of counsel, and other forms long since only partially observed, were formally abolished. The prisoners were brought before the court in batches of twenty, thirty, or fifty at a time. A short vaguely-worded charge was read. The president asked each person his or her name and one or two questions. No evidence on either side was heard. The jury condemned the accused in a body. To make as quick as possible the work of judicial massacre, Robespierre’s agents invented a story that the prisoners were conspiring to save themselves by assassinating the members of the Convention, and on this charge persons belonging to every condition of life, brought together from all quarters of France, were sent pell mell to the scaffold. From the time of its institution in March 1793 to the passing of this law on June 10, 1794, the court had condemned to death 1,259 persons; after June 18, in less than seven weeks, it caused the execution of 1,368 persons. The reorganisation of this court, which Robespierre, by the reappointment of judges and jurymen, endeavoured to convert into his special instrument, spread alarm on every side. At this time, indeed, terror prevailed in official circles to an extent that it would be difficult to exaggerate. There was no opposition to the Government. In the Jacobins, the Commune, the Convention, the Sections, no propositions were made that did not accord with the views of the two committees. In the Commune, the National agent Payan travestied the language of Robespierre, as Robespierre in the Convention the language of Rousseau. In the departments party strife was suppressed as it was in Paris. The clubs, few of which now numbered more than forty or fifty members, followed without a will of their own the cue given them from Paris. All over the country festivals in honour of the Supreme Being took the place of festivals in honour of Reason. Although Robespierre proclaimed principles of religious toleration, he neither desired nor suffered their observance. It is possible that he would never have ventured, as Hébert had done, to proscribe the Catholic worship, but the work having been done for him, circumstances would not permit him to seek supporters by again allowing the celebration of those rites which still had the affection of the nation. He was at the head of a Government which could not retrace a step without extreme danger of weakening its own authority, and it was only by continuing the system already in force that it was possible for him, as he could not fail to be aware, to carry his social ideas into practice. Hence the feast