Besides the Jacobin Club, other machinery existed at Paris by aid of which the ultra-democrats were gradually paving the way for their own advent to power. In September 1790, the commune of Paris was reorganised in accordance with a special law, being divided into 48 sections, each of which had its primary assembly, composed of active citizens. Out of a population of 800,000, 84,000 were entitled to vote. Each of the 48 primary assemblies, commonly known as the sections, had a permanent committee, whose business it was to execute the orders of the municipality, and to carry out police regulations within the section. The municipality itself, of which Bailly was re-elected mayor, consisted of a general council of 96 and an executive of 44 members. It did its best to maintain order and support the constitution. Its position, however, was a difficult one. Work was scarce, crime rife, the prisons crowded. Liberty of speech and of the press was on all sides abused. There were no laws by which political agitation, though it took the form of treason to the constitution, could be legally suppressed. In the sections, owing to the withdrawal into private life of men of moderate views, the ultra-democrats were often able to obtain the upper hand. The permanent committees, in place of obeying the municipality, sometimes disputed authority with it or took an independent course of their own. All the 48 primary assemblies were entitled to meet whenever eight of their number made the demand in legal form. In the poorer sections agitators, by unceasing hostile criticism, undermined amongst the lower classes the popularity of the Assembly, of the municipality, of Lafayette, and of the national guard. Amongst many popular clubs, founded in different parts of Paris, the _Cordeliers_ south of the Seine acquired special notoriety. Here presided Danton, an orator distinguished among his fellows by the zeal and energy which he flung into the contest with the municipality. ♦Mirabeau’s policy and death.♦