like the amazing Anacharsis Clootz, who assured the Legislative Assembly that his heart was French, though his soul was 'sans-culotte.' Later on the quality deteriorated, and a lower and worse element enveloped the rest. But the important Jacobin leaders were men of education, although they often condescended in pursuit of popularity to adopt worse manners than their own. It was through their success in organisation that these men attained to power. From the first the Jacobin Society in Paris, with its many great names and high prestige, had attained an exceptional position, and that position it immensely strengthened by establishing branch societies all over France. In the autumn of 1790, the Club in Paris founded a newspaper to circulate among its members, and entrusted the task of editing it to Laclos. Before the end of the year, it was able to publish a list of over a hundred and twenty provincial clubs, all affiliated to the Society in Paris, in constant correspondence with it, taking their views from its leaders and directing their policy by theirs. To these clubs flocked the energetic young Radicals of the provincial towns. They became centres of advanced revolutionary feeling. Their members had faith, enthusiasm, recklessness, ambition; they organised local politics, suggested or connived at political riots, and every day claimed a larger part in the direction of local affairs. In some large cities the authorised Jacobin Club had an unauthorised club or combination behind it, composed of less respectable and responsible politicians, who popularised the doctrines of the superior body, and supplemented them, when necessary, by force. As the year 1791 advanced, the number of affiliated clubs steadily increased. In August, it had risen to nearly four hundred. In the autumn and winter, it rose more rapidly still. In June, 1792, it had reached twelve hundred; and by the end of August in that year, one fairly competent observer reckons that there were twenty-six thousand Jacobin clubs in France. The value of this widespread organisation in giving to the party strength and cohesion cannot be placed too high. When it is remembered that this was the only federation in existence--for all attempts made by other parties to found similar organisations were broken up by force--it is more easy to realise the influence which the Jacobins wielded upon politics, and to understand how the Club in Paris, even when distrusted and unpopular, was able to face its enemies and to hold its own.