In many departments[3208] they have forestalled the summons. In the Var, for example, pillages and proscriptions have begun with the month of May. According to custom, they first seize upon the castles and the monasteries, although these have become national property, at one time alleging as a reason for this that the administration "is too slow in carrying out sentence against the émigrés," and again, that "the château, standing on an eminence, weighs upon the inhabitants."[3209] There is scarcely a village in France that does not contain twoscore wretches who are always ready to line their pockets, which is just the number of thieves who thoroughly sacked the château of Montaroux, carrying off "furniture, produce, clothing, even the jugs and bottles in the cellar." There are the same doings by the same band at the chateau of Tournon; the château of Salerne is burned, that of Flagose is pulled down; the canal of Cabris is destroyed; then the convent of Montrieux, the châteaux of Grasse, of Canet, of Régusse, of Brovaz, and many others, all devastated, and the devastations are made "daily."--It is impossible to suppress this country brigandage. The reigning dogma, weakening authority in the magistrates' hands, and the clubs, "which cover the department," have spread the fermentation of anarchy everywhere. "Administrators, judges, municipal officers, all who are invested with any authority, and who have the courage to use it in forcing respect for law, are one by one denounced by public opinion as enemies of the constitution and of liberty; because, people say, they talk of nothing but the law, as if they did not know that the will of the people makes the law, and that we are the people."[3210] This is the real principle; here, as at Paris, it instantly begets its consequences. "In many of these clubs nothing is discussed but the plundering of estates and cutting off the heads of aristocrats. And who are designated by this infamous title? In the cities, the great traders and rich proprietors; in the country, those whom we call the bourgeois; everywhere, all peaceable citizens, the friends of order, who wish to enjoy, under the shadow of the protecting law, the blessings of the Constitution. Such was the rage of their denunciations that in one of these clubs a good and brave peasant was denounced as an aristocrat; the whole of his aristocracy consisting in his having said to those who plundered the château of their seigneur, already mentioned, that they would not enjoy in peace the fruits of their crime."--Here is the Jacobin programme of Paris in advance, namely, the division of the French into two classes, the spoliation of one, the despotism of the other; the destruction of the well-to-do, orderly and honest under the dictation of those who are not so.