310 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1S53 chap, judges from the judgment-seat, still it seemed to ' them that, because of Kome, they ought to side with Maupas. So far as concerned her political action in this time of trial, they suffered the Church of France to degenerate into a mere sub- department of the Home Ofiice. In the rural districts, when the time for the Plebiscite came, they fastened tickets marked 'Yes' upon their people, and drove them in ilocks to the poll. XVII. Every institution in the country being thus suborned or enslaved or shattered, the brethren of the Elysde resolved to follow up their victory over France France. In the sense which will presently appear they resolved to disman her. It had resulted, from the political state of France during several years, that great numbers of the most stirring men in the country had belonged to clubs, which the law called ' secret societies.' A net thrown over this class would gather into its folds whole myriads of honest men ; and indeed it has been computed that the number of persons then alive who at one time or other had belonged to some kind of 'secret 'society,' amounted to no less than two millions. If French citizens at some period of their lives had belonged to societies forbidden by statute, it was enough (and, after a lapse of time, much more than enough) that the penalties of the law which they had disobeyed should be enforced against
