Number of Montagnards at the start.--Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain.--The Gironde.--Ascendancy of the Girondins in the Convention.--Their intellectual character.--Their principles.--The plan of their Constitution.--Their fanaticism.--Their sincerity, culture and tastes.--How they differ from pure Jacobins.--How they comprehend popular sovereignty.--Their stipulations with regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups.-- Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy. However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting machine has not provided the expected results. At the opening of the session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty[3330] are found to approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers."[3331] But where the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections. The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly, and one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly enter the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have of government business has given them some insights. In short, the consciences of six hundred and fifty deputies are only in part perverted. They are all, unquestionably, decided republicans, enemies of tradition, apostles of reason, and trained in deductive politics; only on these conditions could they be elected. Every candidate is supposed to possess the Jacobin faith, or, at least, to recite the revolutionary creed. The Convention, consequently, at its opening session votes unanimously, with cheers and enthusiasm, the abolition of royalty, and three months later it pronounces, by a large majority, Louis XVI., "guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation, and of assaults on the general welfare of the State."[3332]