the bourgeois, substituting themselves for the nobles, plundered what remained of communal lands. Many a peasant revolt was necessary to force the Convention in 1792 to sanction what the rebellious peasants had accomplished in the eastern part of France. That is to say, the Convention ordered the restitution of communal lands to the peasants. This only took place there, when the land had already been retaken by revolutionary means. It is the fate of all revolutionary laws to be put into action when they are already an accomplished fact.
Nevertheless the Convention tainted this law with bourgeois gall. It decreed that lands retaken from nobles should be divided into equal parts among "active citizens" only,—that is to say, among the village bourgeois. By one stroke of the pen it thus dispossessed "passive citizens,"—that is to say, the mass of impoverished peasants, who had most need of these communal lands. Upon which, fortunately, the peasants again revolted, and in 1793 the Convention passed a new law decreeing the division of communal lands among all inhabitants. This was never put into practice, and only served as an excuse for new thefts of communal lands.
Would not such measures suffice to bring about what is called the "natural death" of communes? Yet communes still existed. On August 24, 1794, the reaction, being in power, struck the final blow. The State confiscated all communal lands, and made of them a guarantee fund for the public debt, putting them up at auction and selling them to its creatures the "Thermidorians."
This law was happily repealed after being in force three years. But, at the same time, communes were abolished, and replaced by cantonal councils in order that the State might the more easily fill them with its creatures. This lasted till 1801, when village communes were revived. But then the government took it upon itself to appoint mayors and syndics in each of the 36,000 communes! And this absurdity lasted till the revolution of July, 1830, after which the law of 1789 was again put into force. And in the interval communal
