One of the most prominent features of the new order was the demand which it made upon people's time. Under it, it was estimated, one out of every thirty-four men in the country held office. But even for those who escaped the troubles of office, no small burden of citizenship remained. Every active citizen was an elector and a member of the National Guard. As riots were perpetual, his service in the National Guard soon became burdensome. As elections multiplied, as every place in the municipality, in the district, in the department, in the legislature, and before long in the various branches of the law and of the Church was filled by election, and as each election presupposed meetings, committees, canvassing, and a large expenditure of time, his duties as an elector gradually became intolerable. The history of the innumerable elections held in France after the outbreak of the Revolution shows clearly that busy, working people found it impossible, after a time, to perform all the duties imposed on them by the State, and, immersed in the calls of business, drew away from politics, when their first enthusiasm had worn off, and gave up coming to the polls. Politics steadily fell more and more into the hands of those who were prepared to make their living out of them. Only the unoccupied and the ambitious were willing to give the time required to speeches, to meetings, to party organising, to all the arts of many different shades, by which minute democracies are won, and which are essential to political success, where every office in the service in the State is made the prize of the electioneer. It is curious, however, to notice in the new constitution two points, on which the devotion of the Assembly to theoretic rights gave way to its devotion to other considerations. The two decrees, which limited the franchise, and which imposed a property qualification for office, were clearly incompatible with the high doctrines of the Rights of Man. The importance of them was specially felt in Paris, where they affected a large number of energetic politicians, including a great many journalists and workmen in irregular employment. They were at once made the subject of strong protest in the democratic Press, and the more advanced leaders seized the opportunity to point out with unanswerable force the disposition which the Assembly showed to promote the interests and influence of the bourgeois at the expense of the working-class. Nothing probably among the earlier measures of the Assembly did so much as these two decrees to give colour to that idea, and to deepen the feeling of antagonism towards the middle class, which was already perceptible among the working people in the towns.