the official subordinates who nominally carried out their commands. The Assembly held them responsible for the safety of the country. It watched them with jealous carefulness. It threatened them with overwhelming penalties if they transgressed. It deliberately refused to be associated with them, or to share their responsibilities in any way. It treated them from the first as suspected persons, and reduced them to mere figure-heads, at which to point the calumnies which its own fears composed. One of the first steps taken by the Assembly towards constructing its new constitution, was thus to make the business of government an almost impossible task in France. Hardly less mischievous than its dread of executive power was the passion for electoral contrivances which possessed the Assembly. It was to some extent this passion which had guided it in its rejection of an Upper Chamber, but the depth of the feeling was more strongly illustrated by the new system of local government, which it adopted in the winter of 1789-1790. Under this system all existing divisions and provincial distinctions were swept away, and the country was as nearly as possible symmetrically divided into 83 departments. These departments were further subdivided into 574 districts, into 4,730 cantons, and lastly into 44,000 communes or municipalities[6]. Of these four divisions the cantons possessed no administrative importance, being only invented for purposes of symmetry and to facilitate the electoral operations. But each of the others, each department, district, and municipality, had its own little constitution, based upon popular election, but with many varieties and complexities of form. Every department, district, and municipality had its own council or deliberative body, and its own executive officers too. The officials of the municipalities were elected directly by the citizens within them. But the higher officials of the districts and departments were, like the deputies to the National Assembly, elected by a double system of election. The primary assemblies of the cantons--that is all the 'active' citizens in each department--chose first a body of electors, and these electors then elected the officials of their own department, the officials of the districts which lay within that department, and lastly the deputies who were to represent the department in the National Assembly at Paris. The right of voting for all these officials was restricted to 'active' citizens, that is to all citizens over twenty-five years of age, who paid in direct taxes to the State a sum equal in amount to three days' wages. The right of standing for any of the offices was further restricted to those who paid direct taxes equal in amount to a mark of silver. All active citizens were required to serve in the National Guard, of which each municipality had its own battalion. The National Guards chose their own commanders, and were under the direct control of the municipal authorities, with whom the