"If you have any influence with the King or the Queen, persuade them that they and France are lost if the royal family does not leave Paris. I am busy with a plan for getting them away."

He prefers everything to the present situation, "even civil war;" for "war, at least, invigorates the soul," while here, "under the dictatorship of demagogues, we are being drowned in slime." Given up to itself, Paris, in three months, "will certainly be a hospital, and, perhaps, a theater of horrors." Against the rabble and its leaders, it is essential that the King should at once coalesce "with his people," that he should go to Rouen, appeal to the provinces, provide a Centre for public opinion, and, if necessary, resort to armed resistance. Malouet, on his side, declares that "the Revolution, since the 5th of October, "horrifies all sensible men, and every party, but that it is complete and irresistible." Thus the three best minds that are associated with the Revolution—those whose verified prophecies attest genius or good sense; the only ones who, for two or three years, and from week to week, have always predicted wisely, and who have employed reason in their demonstrations—these three, Mallet du Pan, Mirabeau, Mabuet, agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it: "undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand decrees only renders its fall the more precipitate.

*****

[Footnote 1401: Bailly, "Memoires," II. 195, 242.]

[Footnote 1402: Elysee Loustalot, journalist, editor of the paper "Revolutions de Paris," was a young lawyer who had shown a natural genius for innovative journalism. He was to die already in 1790. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1403: Montjoie, ch. LXX, p. 65.]

[Footnote 1404: Bailly, II. 74, 174, 242, 261, 282, 345, 392.]

[Footnote 1405: Such as domiciliary visits and arrests apparently made by lunatics. ("Archives de la Prefecture de Police de Paris.")—And Montjoie, ch. LXX. p.67. Expedition of the National Guard against imaginary brigands who are cutting down the crops at Montmorency and the volley fired in the air.—Conquest of Ile-Adam and Chantilly.]

[Footnote 1406: Bailly, II. 46, 95, 232, 287, 296.]

[Footnote 1407: "Archives de la Prefecture de Police," minutes of the meeting of the section of Butte des Moulins, October 5, 1789.]

[Footnote 1408: Bailly, II. 224.—Dusaulx, 418, 202, 257, 174, 158. The powder transported was called poudre de traite (transport); the people understood it as poudre de traitre (traitor). M. de la Salle was near being killed through the addition of an r. It is he who had taken command of the National Guard on the 13th of July.]

[Footnote 1409: Floquet, VII. 54. There is the same scene at Granville, in Normandy, on the 16th of October. A woman had assassinated her husband, while a soldier who was her lover is her accomplice; the woman was about to be hung and the man broken on the wheel, when the populace shout, "The nation has the right of pardon," upset the scaffold, and save the two assassins.]

[Footnote 1410: Bailly, II. 274 (August 17th).]

[Footnote 1411: Bailly, II, 83, 202, 230, 235, 283, 299.]

[Footnote 1412: Mercure de France, the number for September 26th.—De Goncourt, p. 111.]

[Footnote 1413: Mercier, "Tableau de Paris," I, 58; X. 151.]

[Footnote 1414: De Ferrieres, I. 178.—Buchez and Roux, II. 311, 316.—Bai11y, II. 104, 174, 207, 246, 257, 282.]

[Footnote 1415: Mercure de France, September 5th, 1789. Horace Walpole's Letters, September 5, 1789.—M. de Lafayette, "Memoires," I. 272. During the week following the 14th of July, 6,000 soldiers deserted and went over to the people, besides 400 and 800 Swiss Guards and six battalions of the French Guards, who remain without officers, and do as they please. Vagabonds from the neighboring villages flock in, and there are more than "30,000 strangers and vagrants" in Paris.]

[Footnote 1416: Bailly, II. 282. The crowd of deserters was so great that Lafayette was obliged to place a guard at the barriers to keep them from entering the city. "Without this precaution the whole army would have come in."]

[Footnote 1417: De Ferrieres, I. 103.—De Lavalette, I. 39.—Bailly, I. 53 (on the lawyers). "It may be said that the success of the Revolution is due to this class."—Marmontel, II. 243 "Since the first elections of Paris, in 1789, I remarked," he says, "this species of restless intriguing men, contending with each other to be heard, impatient to make themselves prominent....It is well known what interest this body (the lawyers) had to change Reform into Revolution, the Monarchy into a Republic; the object was to organize for itself a perpetual aristocracy."—Buchez and Roux, II. 358 (article by C. Desmoulins). "In the districts everybody exhausts his lungs and his time in trying to be president, vice-president, secretary or vice-secretary"]

[Footnote 1418: Eugene Hatin, "Histoire de la Presse," vol. V. p. 113. "Le Patriote francais" by Brissot, July 28, 1789.—"L'Ami du Peuple," by Marat, September 12, 1789.—"Annales patriotiques et litteraires," by Carra and Mercier, October 5, 1789,—"Les Revolutions de Paris," chief editor Loustalot, July 17th, 1789.—"Le Tribun du peuple," letters by (middle of 1789).—"Revolutions de France et de Brabant," by C. Desmoulins, November 28, 1789; his "France libre" (I believe of the month of August, and his "Discours de la Lanterne" of the month of September).—"The Moniteur" does not make its appearance until November 24, 1789. In the seventy numbers which follow, up to February 3, 1790, the debates of the Assembly were afterwards written out, amplified, and put in a dramatic form. All numbers anterior to February 3, 1790, are the result of a compilation executed in the year IV. The narrative part during the first six months of the Revolution is of no value. The report of the sittings of the Assembly is more exact, but should be revised sitting by sitting and discourse by discourse for a detailed history of the National Assembly. The principal authorities which are really contemporary are, "Le Mercure de France," "Le Journal de Paris," "Le point de Jour" by Barrere, the "Courrier de Versailles," by Gorsas, the "Courrier de Provence" by Mirabeau, the "Journal des Debats et Decrets," the official reports of the National assembly, the "Bulletin de l'Asemblee Nationale," by Marat, besides the newspapers above cited for the period following the 14th of July, and the speeches, which are printed separately.]

[Footnote 1419: C. Desmoulins, letters of September 20th and of subsequent dates. (He quote, a passage from Lucan in the sense indicated).—Brissot, "Memoires," passim.—Biography of Danton by Robinet. (See the testimony of Madame Roland and of Rousselin de Saint-Albin.)]

[Footnote 1420: "Discours de la Lanterne." See the epigraph of the engraving.]

[Footnote 1421: Buchez and Roux; III. 55; article of Marat, October lst. "Sweep all the suspected men out of the Hotel-de-Ville. . . . . Reduce the deputies of the communes to fifty; do not let them remain in office more than a month or six weeks, and compel them to transact business only in public."—And II. 412, another article by Marat.—Ibid. III. 21. An article by Loustalot.—C. Desmoulins, "Discours de la Lanterne," passim.—Bailly, II. 326.]

[Footnote 1422: Mounier, "Des causes qui ont empeche les Francais d'etre libre," I. 59.—Lally-Tollendal, second letter, 104.—Bailly, II. 203.]

[Footnote 1423: De Bouille, 207.—Lally-Tollendal, ibid, 141, 146.—Mounier, ibid., 41, 60.]

[Footnote 1424: Mercure de France, October 2, 1790 (article of Mallet du Pan: "I saw it"). Criminal proceedings at the Chatelet on the events of October 5th and 6th. Deposition of M. Feydel, a deputy, No. 178.——De Montlosier, i. 259.—Desmoulins (La Lanterne). "Some members of the communes are gradually won over by pensions, by plans for making a fortune and by flattery. Happily, the incorruptible galleries are always on the side of the patriots. They represent the tribunes of the people seated on a bench in attendance on the deliberations of the Senate and who had the veto. They represent the metropolis and, fortunately, it is under the batteries of the metropolis that the constitution is being framed." (C. Desmoulins, simple-minded politician, always let the cat out of the bag.)]

[Footnote 1425: "Procedure du Chatelet," Ibid. Deposition of M. Malouet (No. 111). "I received every day, as well as MM. Lally and Mounier, anonymous letters and lists of proscriptions on which we were inscribed. These letters announced a prompt and violent death to every deputy that advocated the authority of the King."]

[Footnote 1426: Buchez and Roux, I. 368, 376.—-Bailly, II. 326, 341.—Mounier, ibid., 62, 75.]

[Footnote 1427: Etienne Dumont, 145.—Correspondence between Comte de Mirabeau and Comte de la Marck.]

[Footnote 1428: "Procedure criminelle du Chatelet," Deposition 148.—Buchez and Roux, III. 67, 65. (Narrative of Desmoulins, article of Loustalot.) Mercure de France, number for September 5, 1789. "Sunday evening, August 30, at the Palais-Royal, the expulsion of several deputies of every class was demanded, and especially some of those from Dauphiny... They spoke of bringing the King to Paris as well as the Dauphin. All virtuous citizens, every incorruptible patriot, was exhorted to set out immediately for Versailles."]

[Footnote 1429: These acts of violence were not reprisals; nothing of the kind took place at the banquet of the body-guards (October 1st). "Amidst the general joy," says an eye-witness, "I heard no insults against the National Assembly, nor against the popular party, nor against anybody. The only cries were 'Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! We will defend them to the death!'" (Madame de Larochejacquelein, p.40.—Ibid. Madame Campan, another eye-witness.)—It appears to be certain, however, that the younger members of the National Guard at Versailles turned their cockades so as to be like other people, and it is also probable that some of the ladies distributed white cockades. The rest is a story made up before and after the event to justify the insurrection.—Cf. Lerol, "Histoire de Versailles," II. 20-107. Ibid. p. 141. "As to that proscription of the national cockade, all witnesses deny it." The originator of the calumny is Gorsas, editor of the Courrier de Versailles.]

[Footnote 1430: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 88, 110, 120, 126, 127, 140, 146, 148.—Marmontel, "Memoires," a conversation with Champfort, in May, 1789.—Morellet, "Memoires," I. 398. (According to the evidence of Garat, Champfort gave all his savings, 3,000 livres, to defray the expenses of maneuvers of this description.)—Malouet (II. 2). knew four of the deputies "who took direct part in this conspiracy."]

[Footnote 1431: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." 1st. On the Flemish soldiers. Depositions 17, 20, 24, 35, 87, 89, 98.—2nd. On the men disguised as women. Depositions 5, 10, 14, 44, 49, 59, 60, 110, 120, 139, 145, 146, 148. The prosecutor designates six of them to be seized.—3rd. On the condition of the women of the expedition. Depositions 35, 83, 91, 98, 146, and 24.—4th. On the money distributed. Depositions 49, 56, 71, 82, 110, 126.]

[Footnote 1432: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Deposition 61. "During the night scenes, not very decent, occurred among these people, which the witness thought it useless to relate."]

[Footnote 1433: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 35, 44, 81.—Buchez and Roux, III. 120. (Minutes of the meeting of the Commune, October 5th.) Journal de Paris, October 12th. A few days after, M. Pic, clerk of the prosecutor, brought "a package of 100,000 francs which he had saved from the enemies' hands," and another package of notes was found thrown, in the hubbub, into a receipt-box.]

[Footnote 1434: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 61, 77, 81, 148, 154.—Dumont, 181.—Mounier, "Expose justificatif," and specially "Fait relatif a la derniere insurrection."]

[Footnote 1435: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Deposition 168. The witness sees on leaving the King's apartment "several women dressed as fish-wives, one of whom, with a pretty face, has a paper in her hand, and who exclaims as she holds it up, 'He! F..., we have forced the guy to sign.' "]

[Footnote 1436: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 89, 91, 98. "Promising all, even raising their petticoats before them."]

[Footnote 1437: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet," Depositions 9, 20, 24, 30, 49, 61, 82, 115, 149, 155.]

[Footnote 1438: Procedure criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 7, 30, 35, 40.—Cf. Lafayette, "Memoires," and Madame Campan, "Memoires."]

[Footnote 1439: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Deposition 24. A number of butcher-boys run after the carriages issuing from the Petite-Ecurie shouting out, "Don't let the curs escape!"]

[Footnote 1440: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 101, 91, 89, and 17. M. de Miomandre, a body-guard, mildly says to the ruffians mounting the staircase: "My friends, you love your King, and yet you come to annoy him even in his palace!"]

[Footnote 1441: Malouet, II. 2. "I felt no distrust," says Lafayette in 1798; "the people promised to remain quiet."]

[Footnote 1442: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 9, 16, 60, 128, 129, 130, 139, 158, 168, 170.—M. du Repaire, body-guard, being sentry at the railing from two o'clock in the morning, a man passes his pike through the bars saying, "You embroidered b. . . , your turn will come before long." M. de Repaire, "retires within the sentry-box without saying a word to this man, considering the orders that have been issued not to act."]

[Footnote 1443: "Procedure Criminelle du Chatelet." Depositions 82, 170—Madame Campan. II. 87.—De Lavalette, I.33.—Cf. Bertrand de Molleville, Memoires.]

[Footnote 1444: Duval, "Souvenirs de la Terreur," I. 78. (Doubtful in almost everything, but here he is an eye-witness. He dined opposite the hair-dresser's, near the railing of the Park of Saint-Cloud.)—M. de Lally-Tollendal's second letter to a friend. "At the moment the King entered his capital with two bishops of his council with him in the carriage, the cry was heard, 'Off to the lamp post with the bishops!'"]

[Footnote 1445: De Montlosier, I. 303.—Moniteur, sessions of the 8th, 9th, and 10th of October.—Malouet, II. 9, 10, 20.—Mounier, Recherches sur les Causes, etc., and "Addresse aux Dauphinois."]

[Footnote 1446: De Ferrieres, I. 346. (On the 9th of October, 300 members have already taken their passports.) Mercure de France, No. of the 17th October. Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I. 116, 126, 364.]

[Footnote 1447: Correspondence of Mirabeau and M. de la Marck, I.175. (The words of Monsieur to M. de la Marck.)]



BOOK SECOND. THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, AND THE RESULT OF ITS LABORS.



CHAPTER I.—CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR THE FRAMING OF GOOD LAWS.

Among the most difficult undertakings in this world is the formulation of a national constitution, especially if this is to be a complete and comprehensive work. To replace the old structures inside which a great people has lived by a new, different, appropriate and durable set of laws, to apply a mold of one hundred thousand compartments on to the life of twenty-six million people, to construct it so harmoniously, adapt it so well, so closely, with such an exact appreciation of their needs and their faculties, that they enter it of themselves and move about it without collisions, and that their spontaneous activity should at once find the ease of familiar routine,—is an extraordinary undertaking and probably beyond the powers of the human mind. In any event, the mind requires all its powers to carry the undertaking out, and it cannot protect itself carefully enough against all sources of disturbance and error. An Assembly, especially a Constituent Assembly, requires, outwardly, security and independence, inwardly, silence and order, and generally, calmness, good sense, practical ability and discipline under competent and recognized leaders. Do we find anything of all this in the Constituent Assembly?



I.—These conditions absent in the Assembly

Causes of disorder and irrationality—The place of meeting —The large number of deputies—Interference of the galleries —Rules of procedure wanting, defective, or disregarded.—The parliamentary leaders—Susceptibility and over-excitement of the Assembly—Its paroxysms of enthusiasm.—Its tendency to emotion.—It encourages theatrical display—Changes which these displays introduce in its good intentions.

We have only to look at it outwardly to have some doubts about it. At Versailles, and then at Paris, the sessions are held in an immense hall capable of seating 2,000 persons, in which the most powerful voice must be strained in order to be heard. It is not calculated for the moderate tone suitable for the discussion of business; the speaker is obliged to shout, and the strain on the voice communicates itself to the mind; the place itself suggests declamation; and this all the more readily because the assemblage consists of 1,200, that is to say, a crowd, and almost a mob. 'At the present day (1877), in our assemblies of five or six hundred deputies, there are constant interruptions and an incessant buzz; there is nothing so rare as self-control, and the firm resolve to give an hour's attention to a discourse opposed to the opinions of the hearers.—What can be done here to compel silence and patience? Arthur Young on different occasions sees "a hundred members on the floor at once," shouting and gesticulating. "Gentlemen, you are killing me!" says Bailly, one day, sinking with exhaustion. Another president exclaims in despair, "Two hundred speaking at the same time cannot be heard; will you make it impossible then to restore order in the Assembly?" The rumbling, discordant din is further increased by the uproar of the galleries.[2101]

"In the British Parliament," writes Mallet du Pan, "I saw the galleries cleared in a trice because the Duchess of Gordon happened unintentionally to laugh too loud."

Here, the thronging crowd of spectators, stringers, delegates from the Palais-Royal, soldiers disguised as citizens, and prostitutes collected and marshaled, applaud, clap their hands, stamp and hoot, at their pleasure. This is carried to so great an extent that M. de Montlosier ironically proposes "to give the galleries a voice in the deliberations."[2102] Another member wishes to know whether the representatives are so many actors, whom the nation sends there to endure the hisses of the Paris public. Interruptions, in fact, take place as in a theater, and, frequently, if the members do not give satisfaction, they are forced to desist. On the other hand, the deputies who are popular with this energetic audience, on which they keep and eye, are actors before the footlights: they involuntarily yield to its influence, and exaggerate their ideas as well as their words to be in unison with it. Tumult and violence, under such circumstances, become a matter of course, and the chances of an Assembly acting wisely are diminished by one-half; on becoming a club of agitators, it ceases to be a conclave of legislators.

Let us enter and see how this one proceeds. Thus encumbered, thus surrounded and agitated, does it take at least those precautions without which no assembly of men can govern itself. When several hundred persons assemble together for deliberation, it is evident that some sort of an internal police is necessary; first of all, some code of accepted usage, some written precedents, by which its acts may be prepared and defined, considered in detail, and properly passed. The best of these codes it ready to hand: at the request of Mirabeau, Romilly has sent over the standing orders of the English House of Commons.[2103] But with the presumption of novices, they pay no attention to this code; they imagine it is needless for them; they will borrow nothing from foreigners; they accord no authority to experience, and, not content with rejecting the forms it prescribes, "it is with difficulty they can be made to follow any rule whatever." They leave the field open to the impulsiveness of individuals; any kind of influence, even that of a deputy, even of one elected by themselves, is suspected by them; hence their choice of a new president every fortnight.—They submit to no constraint or control, neither to the legal authority of a parliamentary code, nor to the moral authority of parliamentary chiefs. They are without any such; they are not organized in parties; neither on one side nor on the other is a recognized leader found who fixes the time, arranges the debate, draws up the motion, assigns parts, and gives the rein to or restrains his supporters. Mirabeau is the only one capable of obtaining this ascendancy; but, on the opening of the Assembly, he is discredited by the notoriety of his vices, and, towards the last, is compromised by his connections with the Court. No other is of sufficient eminence to have any influence; there is too much of average and too little of superior talent.—Their self-esteem is, moreover, as yet too strong to allow any concessions. Each of these improvised legislators has come satisfied with his own system, and to submit to a leader to whom he would entrust his political conscience, to make of him what three out of four of these deputies should be, a voting machine, would require an apprehension of danger, some painful experience, an enforced surrender which he is far from realizing.[2104] For this reason, save in the violent party, each acts as his own chief, according to the impulse of the moment, and the confusion may be imagined. Strangers who witness it, lift their hands in pity and astonishment. "They discuss nothing in their Assembly," writes Gouverneur Morris,[2105] "One large half of the time is spent in hallowing and bawling.... Each Man permitted to speak delivers the Result of his Lubrications," amidst this noise, taking his turn as inscribed, without replying to his predecessor, or being replied to by his successor, without ever meeting argument by argument; so that while the firing is interminable, "all their shots are fired in the air." Before this "frightful clatter" can be reported, the papers of the day are obliged to make all sorts of excisions, to prune away "nonsense," and reduce the "inflated and bombastic style." Chatter and clamor, that is the whole substance of most of these famous sittings.

"You would hear," says a journalist, "more yells than speeches; the sittings seemed more likely to end in fights than in decrees... . Twenty times I said to myself, on leaving, that if anything could arrest and turn the tide of the Revolution, it would be a picture of these meetings traced without caution or adaptation... All my efforts were therefore directed to represent the truth, without rendering it repulsive. Out of what had been merely a row, I concocted a scene... I gave all the sentiments, but not always in the same words. I translated their yells into words, their furious gestures into attitudes, and when I could not inspire esteem, I endeavored to rouse the emotions."

There is no remedy for this evil; for, besides the absence of discipline, there is an inward and fundamental cause for the disorder. These people are too susceptible. They are Frenchmen, and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century; brought up in the amenities of the utmost refinement, accustomed to deferential manners, to constant kind attentions and mutual obligations, so thoroughly imbued with the instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions, venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly strung nerves, on men of the world accustomed to the accommodations and amiabilities of universal urbanity. They are at once beside themselves.—And all the more so because they never anticipated a battle; but, on the contrary, a festival, a grand and charming idyll, in which everybody, hand in hand, would assemble in tears around the throne and save the country amid mutual embraces. Necker himself arranges, like a theater, the chamber in which the sessions of the Assembly are to be held.[2107] "He was not disposed to regard the Assemblies of the States-General as anything but a peaceful, imposing, solemn, august spectacle, which the people would enjoy;" and when the idyll suddenly changes into a drama, he is so frightened that it seems to him as if a landslide had occurred that threatened, during the night, to break down the framework of the building.—At the time of the meeting of the States-General, everybody is delighted; all imagine that they are about to enter the promised land. During the procession of the 4th of May,

"tears of joy," says the Marquis de Ferrieres, "filled my eyes... . In a state of sweet rapture I beheld France supported by Religion" exhorting us all to concord. "The sacred ceremonies, the music, the incense, the priests in their sacrificial robes, that dais, that orb radiant with precious stones. .. I called to my mind the words of the prophet... . My God, my country, and my countrymen, all were one with myself!"

Such emotions repeatedly explode in the course of the session, and resulted in the passage of laws which no one could have imagined.

"Sometimes,"[2108] writes the American ambassador, "a speaker gets up in the midst of a deliberation, makes a fine discourse on a different subject, and closes with a nice little resolution which is carried with a hurrah. Thus, in considering the plan of a national bank proposed by M. Necker, one of them took it into his head to move that every member should give his silver buckles, which was agreed to at once, and the honorable mover laid his upon the table, after which the business went on again."

Thus, over-excited, they do not know in the morning what they will do in the afternoon, and they are at the mercy of every surprise. When they are seized with these fits of enthusiasm, infatuation spreads over all the benches; prudence gives way, all foresight disappears and every objection is stifled. During the night of the 4th of August,[2109] "nobody is master of himself. The Assembly presents the spectacle of an inebriated crowd in a shop of valuable furniture, breaking and smashing at will whatever they can lay their hands on."

"That which would have required a year of care and reflection," says a competent foreigner, "was proposed, deliberated over, and passed by general acclamation. The abolition of feudal rights, of titles, of the privileges of the provinces, three articles which alone embraced a whole system of jurisprudence and statesmanship, were decided with ten or twelve other measures in less time than is required in the English Parliament for the first reading of an important bill."

"Such are our Frenchmen," says Mirabeau again, "they spend a month in disputes about syllables, and overthrow, in a single night, the whole established system of the Monarchy!"[2110]

The truth is, they display the nervousness of women, and, from one end of the Revolution to the other, this excitability keeps on increasing.

Not only are they excited, but the pitch of excitement must be maintained, and, like the drunkard who, once stimulated, has recourse again to strong waters, one would say that they carefully try to expel the last remnants of calmness and common sense from their brains. They delight in pompous phrases, in high-sounding rhetoric, in declamatory sentimental strokes of eloquence: this is the style of nearly all their speeches, and so strong is their taste, they are not satisfied with the orations made amongst themselves. Lally and Necker, having made "affecting and sublime" speeches at the Hotel-de-Ville, the Assembly wish them to be repeated before them:[2111] this being the heart of France, it is proper for it to answer to the noble emotions of all Frenchmen. Let this heart throb on, and as strongly as possible, for that is its office, and day by day it receives fresh impulses. Almost all sittings begin with the reading of flattering addresses or of threatening denunciations. The petitioners frequently appear in person, and read their enthusiastic effusions, their imperious advice, their doctrines of dissolution. To-day it is Danton, in the name of Paris, with his bull visage and his voice that seems a tocsin of insurrection; to-morrow, the vanquishers of the Bastille, or some other troop, with a band of music which continues playing even into the hall. The meeting is not a conference for business, but a patriotic opera, where the eclogue, the melodrama, and sometimes the masquerade, mingle with the cheers and the clapping of hands.[2112]—A serf of the Jura is brought to the bar of the Assembly aged one hundred and twenty years, and one of the members of the cortege, "M. Bourbon de la Crosniere, director of a patriotic school, asks permission to take charge of an honorable old man, that he may be waited on by the young people of all ranks, and especially by the children of those whose fathers were killed in the attack on the Bastille." [2113] Great is the hubbub and excitement. The scene seems to be in imitation of Berquin,[2114] with the additional complication of a mercenary consideration.

But small matters are not closely looked into, and the Assembly, under the pressure of the galleries, stoops to shows, such as are held at fairs. Sixty vagabonds who are paid twelve francs a head, in the costumes of Spaniards, Dutchmen, Turks, Arabs, Tripolitans, Persians, Hindus, Mongols, and Chinese, conducted by the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz, enter, under the title of Ambassadors of the Human Race, to declaim against tyrants, and they are admitted to the honors of the sitting. On this occasion the masquerade is a stroke devised to hasten and extort the abolition of nobility.[2115] At other times, there is little or no object in it; its ridiculousness is inexpressible, for the farce is played out as seriously and earnestly as in a village award of prizes. For three days, the children who have taken their first communion before the constitutional bishop have been promenaded through the streets of Paris; at the Jacobin club they recite the nonsense they have committed to memory; and, on the fourth day, admitted to the bar of the Assembly, their spokesman, a poor little thing of twelve years, repeats the parrot-like tirade. He winds up with the accustomed oath, upon which all the others cry out in their piping, shrill voices, "We swear!" As a climax, the President, Trejlhard, a sober lawyer, replies to the little gamins with perfect gravity in a similar strain, employing metaphors, personifications, and everything else belonging to the stock-in-trade of a pedant on his platform:

"You merit a share in the glory of the founders of liberty, prepared as you are to shed your blood in her behalf."

Immense applause from the "left" and the galleries, and a decree ordering the speeches of both president and children to be printed. The children, probably, would rather have gone out to play; but, willingly or unwillingly, they receive or endure the honors of the sitting.[2116]

Such are the tricks of the stage and of the platform by which the managers here move their political puppets. Emotional susceptibility, once recognized as a legitimate force, thus becomes an instrument of intrigue and constraint. The Assembly, having accepted theatrical exhibitions when these were sincere and earnest, is obliged to tolerate them when they become mere sham and buffoonery. At this vast national banquet, over which it meant to preside, and to which, throwing the doors wide open, it invited all France, its first intoxication was due to wine of a noble quality; but it has touched glasses with the populace, and by degrees, under the pressure of its associates, it has descended to adulterated and burning drinks, to a grotesque unwholesome inebriety which is all the more grotesque and unwholesome, because it persists in believing itself to be reason.



II.—Inadequacy of its information.

Its composition—The social standing and culture of the larger number—Their incapacity. Their presumption —Fruitless advice of competent men.—Deductive politics —Parties—The minority; its faults—The majority; its dogmatism.

If reason could only resume its empire during the lucid intervals! But reason must exist before it can govern, and in no French Assembly, except the two following this, have there ever been fewer political intellects.—Strictly speaking, with careful search, there could undoubtedly be found in France, in 1789, five or six hundred experienced men, such as the intendants and military commanders of every province; next to these the prelates, administrators of large dioceses the members of the local "parlements," whose courts gave them influence, and who, besides judicial functions, possessed a portion of administrative power; and finally, the principal members of the Provincial Assemblies, all of them influential and sensible people who had exercised control over men and affairs, at once humane, liberal, moderate, and capable of understanding the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of a great reform; indeed, their correspondence, full of facts, stated with precision and judgment, when compared with the doctrinaire rubbish of the Assembly, presents the strongest possible contrast.—But most of these lights remain under a bushel; only a few of them get into the Assembly; these burn without illuminating, and are soon extinguished in the tempest.' I. The venerable Machault is not there, nor Malesherbes; there are none of the old ministers or the marshals of France. Not one of the intendants is there, except Malouet, and by the superiority of this man, the most judicious of the Assembly, one can judge the services which his colleagues would have rendered. Out of two hundred and ninety-one members of the clergy,[2117] there are indeed forty-eight bishops or archbishops and thirty-five abbots or canons, but, being prelates and with large endowments, they excite the envy of their order, and are generals without any soldiers. We have the same spectacle among the nobles. Most of them, the gentry of the provinces, have been elected in opposition to the grandees of the Court. Moreover, neither the grandees of the Court, devoted to worldly pursuits, nor the gentry of the provinces, confined to private life, are practically familiar with public affairs. A small group among them, twenty-eight magistrates and about thirty superior officials who have held command or have been connected with the administration, probably have some idea of the peril of society; but it is precisely for this reason that they seem to be behind the age and remain without influence.—In the Third-Estate, out of five hundred and seventy-seven members, only ten have exercised any important functions, those of intendant, councillor of state, receiver-general, lieutenant of police, director of the mint, and others of the same category. The great majority is composed of unknown lawyers and people occupying inferior positions in the profession, notaries, royal attorneys, register commissaries, judges and assessors of; the presidial, bailiffs and lieutenants of the bailiwick, simple practitioners confined from their youth to the narrow circle of an inferior jurisdiction or to a routine of scribbling, with no escape but philosophical excursions in imaginary space under the guidance of Rousseau and Raynal. There are three hundred and seventy-three of this class, to whom may be added thirty-eight farmers and husbandmen, fifteen physicians, and, among the manufacturers, merchants, and capitalists, some fifty or sixty who are their equals in education and in political capacity. Scarcely one hundred and fifty proprietors are here from the middle class.[2118] To these four hundred and fifty deputies, whose condition, education, instruction, and mental range qualified them for being good clerks, prominent men in a commune, honorable fathers of a family, or, at best, provincial academicians, add two hundred and eight cures, their equals; this makes six hundred and fifty out of eleven hundred and eighteen deputies, forming a positive majority, which, again, is augmented by about fifty philosophical nobles, leaving out the weak who follow the current, and the ambitious who range themselves on the strong side.—We may divine what a chamber thus made up can do, and those who are familiar with such matters prophesy what it will do.[2119]

"There are some able men in the National Assembly," writes the American minister, "yet the best heads among them would not be injured by experience, and, unfortunately, there are great numbers who, with much imagination, have little knowledge, judgment, or reflection."

It would be just as sensible to select eleven hundred notables from an inland province and entrust them to the repair of an old frigate. They would conscientiously break the vessel up, and the frigate they would construct in its place would founder before it left port.

If they would only consult the pilots and professional shipbuilders!—There are several of such to be found around them, whom they cannot suspect, for most of them are foreigners, born in free countries, impartial, sympathetic, and, what is more, unanimous. The Minister of the United States writes, two months before the convocation of the States-General:[2120]

"I, a republican, and just, as it were, emerged from that Assembly which has formed one of the most republican of republican constitutions,—I preach incessantly respect for the prince, attention to the rights of the nobility, and moderation, not only in the object, but also in the pursuit of it."

Jefferson, a democrat and radical, expresses himself no differently. At the time of the oath of the Tennis Court, he redoubles his efforts to induce Lafayette and other patriots to make some arrangement with the King to secure freedom of the press, religious, liberty, trial by jury, the habeas corpus, and a national legislature,—things which he could certainly be made to adopt,—and then to retire into private life, and let these institutions act upon the condition of the people until they had rendered it capable of further progress, with the assurance that there would be no lack of opportunity for them to obtain still more.

"This was all," he continues, "that I thought your countrymen able to bear soberly and usefully."

Arthur Young, who studies the moral life of France so conscientiously, and who is so severe in depicting old abuses, cannot comprehend the conduct of the Commons.

"To set aside practice for theory... in establishing the interests of a great kingdom, in securing freedom to 25,000,000 of people, seems to me the very acme of imprudence, the very quintessence of insanity."

Undoubtedly, now that the Assembly is all-powerful, it is to be hoped that it will be reasonable:

"I will not allow myself to believe for a moment that the representatives of the people can ever so far forget their duty to the French nation, to humanity, and their own fame, as to suffer any inordinate and impracticable views—any visionary or theoretic systems—... to turn aside their exertions from that security which is in their hands, to place on the chance and hazard of public commotion and civil war the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die, and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate adventurers that ever disgraced humanity."

As their plan becomes more definite the remonstrances become more decided, and all the expert judges point out to them the importance of the wheels which they are willfully breaking.

"As they have[2121] hitherto felt severely the authority exercised over them in the name of their princes, every limitation of that authority seems to them desirable. Never having felt the evils of too weak an executive, the disorders to be apprehended from anarchy make as yet no impression"—"They want an American Constitution,[2122] but with a King instead of a President, without reflecting they have no American citizens to support that Constitution... If they have the good sense to give the nobles, as nobles, some portion of the national power, this free constitution will probably last, But otherwise it will degenerate either into a pure monarchy, or a vast republic, or a democracy. Will the latter last? I doubt it. I am sure that it will not, unless the whole nation is changed."

A little later, when they renounce a parliamentary monarchy to put in its place "a royal democracy," it is at once explained to them that such an institution applied to France can produce nothing but anarchy, and finally end in despotism.

"Nowhere[2123] has liberty proved to be stable without a sacrifice of its excesses, without some barrier to its own omnipotence... . Under this miserable government... the people, soon weary of storms, and abandoned without legal protection to their seducers or to their oppressors, will shatter the helm, or hand it over to some audacious hand that stands ready to seize it."

Events occur from month to month in fulfillment of these predictions, and the predictions grow gloomier and more gloomy. It is a flock of wild birds:[2124]

"It is very difficult to guess whereabouts the flock will settle when it flies so wild... . This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of metaphysical whims, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. The Assembly, at once master and slave, new in power, wild in theory, raw in practice, engrossing all functions without being able to exercise any, has freed that fierce, ferocious people from every restraint of religion and respect... . Such a state of things cannot last... The glorious opportunity is lost and for this time, at least, the Revolution has failed."

We see, from the replies of Washington, that he is of the same opinion. On the other side of the Channel, Pitt, the ablest practician, and Burke, the ablest theorist, of political liberty, express the same judgment. Pitt, after 1789, declares that the French have overleaped freedom. After 1790, Burke, in a work which is a prophecy as well as a masterpiece, points to military dictatorship as the termination of the Revolution, "the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth." Nothing is of any effect. With the exception of the small powerless group around Malouet and Mounier, the warnings of Morris, Jefferson, Romilly, Dumont, Mallet du Pan, Arthur Young, Pitt and Burke, all of them men who have experience of free institutions, are received with indifference or repelled with disdain. Not only are our new politicians incapable, but they think themselves the contrary, and their incompetence is aggravated by their infatuation.

"I often used to say, "writes Dumont,[2125] "that if a hundred persons were stopped at haphazard in the streets of London, and a hundred in the streets of Paris, and a proposal were made to them to take charge of the Government, ninety-nine would accept it in Paris and ninety-nine would refuse it in London... The Frenchman thinks that all difficulties can be overcome by a little quickness of wit. Mirabeau accepted the post of reporter to the Committee on Mines without having the slightest tincture of knowledge on the subject."

In short, most of them enter politics "like the gentleman who, on being asked if he knew how to play on the harpsichord, replied, 'I cannot tell, I never tried, but I will see.'"

"The Assembly had so high an opinion of itself, especially the left side of it, that it would willingly have undertaken the framing of the Code of Laws for all nations... Never has so many men been seen together, fancying that they were all legislators, and that they were there to correct all the errors of the past, to remedy all mistakes of the human mind, and ensure the happiness of all ages to come. Doubt had no place in their minds, and infallibility always presided over their contradictory decrees."—

This is because they have a theory and because, according to their notion, this theory renders special knowledge unnecessary. Herein they are thoroughly sincere, and it is of set purpose that they reverse all ordinary modes of procedure. Up to this time a constitution used to be organized or repaired like a ship. Experiments were made from time to time, or a model was taken from vessels in the neighborhood; the first aim was to make the ship sail; its construction was subordinated to its work; it was fashioned in this or that way according to the materials on hand; a beginning was made by examining these materials, and trying to estimate their rigidity, weight, and strength.—All this is reactionary; the age of Reason has come and the Assembly is too enlightened to drag on in a rut. In conformity with the fashion of the time it works by deduction, after the method of Rousseau, according to an abstract notion of right, of the State and of the social compact.[2126] According to this process, by virtue of political geometry alone, they shall have the perfect vessel and since it perfect it follows that it will sail, and that much better than any empirical craft.—They legislate according to this principle, and one may imagine the nature of their discussions. There are no convincing facts, no pointed arguments; nobody would ever imagine that the speakers were gathered together to conduct real business. Through speech after speech, strings of hollow abstractions are endlessly renewed as in a meeting of students in rhetoric for the purpose of practice, or in a society of old bookworms for their own amusement. On the question of the veto "each orator in turn, armed with his portfolio, reads a dissertation which has no bearing whatever" on the preceding one, which makes a "sort of academical session,"[2127] a succession of pamphlets fresh every morning for several days. On the question of the Rights of Man fifty-four speakers are placed on the list.

"I remember," says Dumont, "that long discussion, which lasted for weeks, as a period of deadly boredom,—vain disputes over words, a metaphysical jumble, and most tedious babble; the Assembly was turned into a Sorbonne lecture-room," and all this while chateaux were burning, while town-halls were being sacked, and courts dared no longer hold assize, while the distribution of wheat was stopped, and while society was in course of dissolution. In the same manner the theologians of the Easter Roman Empire kept up their wrangles about the uncreated light of Mount Tabor while Mahomet II was battering the walls of Constantinople with his cannon.—Ours, of course, are another sort of men, juvenile in feeling, sincere, enthusiastic, even generous, and further, more devoted, laborious, and in some cases endowed with rare talent. But neither zeal, nor labor, nor talent are of any use when not employed in the service of a sound idea; and if in the service of a false one, the greater they are the more mischief they do.

Towards the end of the year 1789, there can be not doubt of this; and the parties now formed reveal their presumption, improvidence, incapacity, and obstinacy. "This Assembly," writes the American ambassador,[2128] "may be divided into three parties;—

one called the aristocrats, consists of the high clergy, the parliamentary judges, and such of the nobility as think they ought to form a separate order." This is the party which offers resistance to follies and errors, but with follies and errors almost equally great. In the beginning "the prelates,[2129] instead of conciliating the cures, kept them at a humiliating distance, affecting distinctions, exacting respect," and, in their own chamber, "ranging themselves apart on separate benches." The nobles, on the other hand, the more to alienate the commons, began by charging these with, "revolt, treachery, and treason," and by demanding the use of military force against them. Now that the victorious Third-Estate has again overcome them and overwhelms them with numbers, they become still more maladroit, and conduct the defense much less efficiently than the attack. "In the Assembly," says one of them, "they do not listen, but laugh and talk aloud;" they take pains to embitter their adversaries and the galleries by their impertinence. "They leave the chamber when the President puts the question and invite the deputies of their party to follow them, or cry out to them not to take part in the deliberation: through this desertion, the clubbists become the majority, and decree whatever they please." It is in this way that the appointment of judges and bishops is withdrawn from the King and assigned to the people. Again, after the return from Varennes, when the Assembly finds out that the result of its labors is impracticable and wants to make it less democratic, the whole of the right side refuses to share in the debates, and, what is worse, votes with the revolutionaries to exclude the members of the Constituent from the Legislative Assembly. Thus, not only does it abandon its own cause, but it commits self-destruction, and its desertion ends in suicide.—

A second party remains, "the middle party,"[2130] which consists of well-intentioned people from every class, sincere partisans of a good government; but, unfortunately, they have acquired their ideas of government from books, and are admirable on paper. But as it happens that the men who live in the world are very different from imaginary men who dwell in the heads of philosophers, it is not to be wondered at if the systems taken out of books are fit for nothing but to be upset by another book. Intellects of this stamp are the natural prey of utopians. Lacking the ballast of experience they are carried away by pure logic and serve to enlarge the flock of theorists.—The latter form the third party, which is called the "enrages (the wild men), and who, at the expiration of six months, find themselves "the most numerous of all."

"It is composed," says Morris, "of that class which in America is known by the name of pettifogging lawyers, together with a host of curates and many of those persons who in all revolutions throng to the standard of change because they are not well.[2131] This last party is in close alliance with the populace and derives from this circumstance very great authority."

All powerful passions are on its side, not merely the irritation of the people tormented by misery and suspicion, not merely the ambition and self-esteem of the bourgeois, in revolt against the ancient regime, but also the inveterate bitterness and fixed ideas of so many suffering minds and so many factious intellects, Protestants, Jansenists, economists, philosophers, men who, like Freteau, Rabout-Saint-Etienne, Volney, Sieyes, are hatching out a long arrears of resentments or hopes, and who only await the opportunity to impose their system with all the intolerance of dogmatism and of faith. To minds of this stamp the past is a dead letter; example is no authority; realities are of no account; they live in their own Utopia. Sieyes, the most important of them all, judges that "the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed for imposing on the people;"[2132] he regards the English "as children in the matter of a constitution," and thinks that he is capable of giving France a much better one. Dumont, who sees the first committees at the houses of Brissot and Clavieres, goes away with as much anxiety as "disgust."

"It is impossible," he says, "to depict the confusion of ideas, the license of the imagination, the burlesque of popular notions. One would think that they saw before them the world on the day after the Creation."

They seem to think, indeed, that human society does not exist, and that they are appointed to create it. Just as well might ambassadors "of hostile tribes, and of diverse interests, set themselves to arrange their common lot as if nothing had previously existed." There is no hesitation. They are satisfied that the thing can be easily done, and that, with two or three axioms of political philosophy, the first man that comes may make himself master of it. Immoderate conceit of this kind among men of experience would seem ridiculous; in this assembly of novices it is a strength. A flock which has lost its way follows those who appears to forge ahead; they are the most irrational but they are the most confident, and in the Chamber as in the nation it is the daredevils who become leaders.



III.—The Power Of Simple, General Ideas.

Ascendancy of the revolutionary party—Theory in its favor— The constraint thus imposed on men's minds—Appeal to the passions—Brute force on the side of the party—It profits by this—Oppression of the minority.

Two advantages give this party the ascendancy, and these advantages are of such importance that henceforth whoever possesses them is sure of being master.—In the first place the prevailing theory is on the side of the revolutionaries, and they alone are, in the second place, determined thoroughly to apply it. This party, therefore, is the only one which is consistent and popular in the face of adversaries who are unpopular and inconsequent. Nearly all of the latter, indeed, defenders of the ancient regime, or partisans of a limited monarchy, are likewise imbued with abstract principles and philosophical speculation. The most refractory nobles have advocated the rights of man in their memorials. Mounier, the principal opponent of the demagogues, was the leader of the commons when they proclaimed themselves to be the National—Assembly.[2133] This is enough: they have entered the narrow defile which leads to the abyss. They had no idea of it at the first start, but one step leads to another, and, willing or unwilling, they march on, or are pushed on. When the abyss comes in sight it is too late; they have been driven there by the logical results of their own concessions; they can do nothing but wax eloquent and indignant; having abandoned their vantage ground, they find no halting-place remaining.—There is an enormous power in general ideas, especially if they are simple, and appeal to the passions. None are simpler than these, since they are reducible to the axiom which assumes the rights of man, and subordinate to them every institution, old or new. None are better calculated to inflame the sentiments, since the doctrine enlists human arrogance and pride in its service, and, in the name of justice, consecrates all the demands of independence and domination. Consider three-fourths of the deputies, immature and prejudiced, possessing no information but a few formulas of the current philosophy, with no thread to guide them but pure logic, abandoned to the declamation of lawyers, to the wild utterances of the newspapers, to the promptings of self-esteem, to the hundred thousand tongues which, on all sides, at the bar of the Assembly, at the tribune, in the clubs, in the streets, in their own breasts, repeat unanimously to them, and every day, the same flattery:

"You are sovereign and omnipotent. Right is vested in you alone. The King exists only to execute your will. Every order, every corporation, every power, every civil or ecclesiastical association is illegitimate and null the moment you declare it to be so. You may even transform religion. You are the fathers of the country. You have saved France, you will regenerate humanity. The whole world looks on you in admiration; finish your glorious work—forward, always forward."

Superior good sense and rooted convictions could alone stand firm against this flood of seductions and solicitations; but vacillating and ordinary men are carried away by it. In the harmony of applause which rises, they do not hear the crash of the ruins they produce. In any case, they stop their ears, and shun the cries of the oppressed; they refuse to admit that their work could possibly bring about evil results; they accept the sophisms and untruths which justify it; they allow the assassinated to be calumniated in order to excuse the assassins; they listen to Merlin de Douay, who, after three or four jacqueries, when pillaging, arson, and murder are going on in all the provinces, has just declared in the name of the Committee on Feudalism[2134] that "a law must be presented to the people, the justice of which may enforce silence on the feudatory egoists who, for the past six months, so indecently protest against plunder; the wisdom of which may restore to a sense of duty the peasant who has been led astray for a moment by his resentment of a long oppression." And when Raynal, the surviving patriarch of the philosophic party, one day, for a wonder, takes the plain truth with him into their tribune, they resent his straightforwardness as an outrage, and excuse it solely on the ground of his imbecility. An omnipotent legislator cannot depreciate himself; like a king he is condemned to self-admiration in his public capacity. "There were not thirty deputies amongst us," says a witness, "who thought differently from Raynal," but "in each other's presence the credit of the Revolution, the perspective of its blessings, was an article of faith which had to be believed in;" and, against their own reason, against their conscience, the moderates, caught in the net of their own acts, join the revolutionaries to complete the Revolution.

Had they refused, they would have been compelled; for, to obtain the power, the Assembly has, from the very first, either tolerated or solicited the violence of the streets. But, in accepting insurrectionists for its allies, it makes them masters, and henceforth, in Paris as in the provinces, illegal and brutal force becomes the principal power of the State. "The triumph was accomplished through the people; it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring—after the murder of the baker Francois, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at Nancy, and the outbreak of the Champ de Mars—feel that they themselves are menaced, vote for and apply martial law, and repel force with force. But, in general, when the despotism of the people is exercised only against the royalist minority, they allow their adversaries to be oppressed, and do not consider themselves affected by the violence which assails the party of the "right:" they are enemies, and may be given up to the wild beasts. In accordance with this, the "left" has made its arrangements; its fanaticism has no scruples; it is principle, it is absolute truth that is at stake; this must triumph at any cost. Besides, can there be any hesitation in having recourse to the people in the people's own cause? A little compulsion will help along the good cause, and hence the siege of the Assembly is continually renewed. This was the practice already at Versailles before the 6th of October, while now, at Paris, it is kept up more actively and with less disguise.

At the beginning of the year 1790,[2136] the band under pay comprises seven hundred and fifty effective men, most of them deserters or soldiers drummed out of their regiments, who are at first paid five francs and then forty sous a day. It is their business to make or support motions in the coffee-houses and in the streets, to mix with the spectators at the sittings of the sections, with the groups at the Palais-Royal, and especially in the galleries of the National-Assembly, where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader is a Chevalier de Saint-Louis, to whom they swear obedience, and who receives his orders from the Committee of Jacobins. His first lieutenant at the Assembly is a M. Saule, "a stout, small, stunted old fellow, formerly an upholsterer, then a charlatan hawker of four penny boxes of grease (made from the fat of those that had been hung—for the cure of diseases of the kidneys) and all his life a sot.... who, by means of a tolerably shrill voice, which was always well moistened, has acquired some reputation in the galleries of the Assembly." In fact, he has forged admission tickets he has been turned out; he has been obliged to resume "the box of ointment, and travel for one or two months in the provinces with a man of letters for his companion." But on his return, "through the protection of a groom of the Court, he obtained a piece of ground for a coffee-house against the wall of the Tuileries garden, almost alongside of the National Assembly," and now it is at home in his coffee-shop behind his counter that the hirelings of the galleries "come to him to know what they must say, and to be told the order of the day in regard to applause." Besides this, he is there himself; "it is he who for three years is to regulate public sentiment in the galleries confided to his care, and, for his useful and satisfactory services, the Constituent Assembly will award him a recompense," to which the Legislative Assembly will add "a pension of six hundred livres, besides a lodging in an apartment of the Feuillants."

We can divine how men of this stamp, thus compensated, do their work. From the top of the galleries[2137] they drown the demands of the "right" by the force of their lungs; this or that decree, as, for instance, the abolition of titles of nobility, is carried, "not by shouts, but by terrific howls."[2138] On the arrival of the news of the sacking of the Hotel de Castries by the populace, they applaud. On the question coming up as to the decision whether the Catholic faith shall be dominant, "they shout out that the aristocrats must all be hung, and then things will go on well." Their outrages not only remain unpunished, but are encouraged: this or that noble who complains of their hooting is called to order, while their interference and vociferations, their insults and their menaces, are from this time introduced as one of the regular wheels of legislative operations. Their pressure is still worse outside the Chamber.[2139] The Assembly is obliged several times to double its guard. On the 27th of September, 1790, there are 40,000 men around the building to extort the dismissal of the Ministers, and "motions for assassination" are made under the windows, On the 4th of January, 1791, whilst on a call of the house the ecclesiastical deputies pass in turn to the tribune, to take or refuse the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, a furious clamor ascends in the Tuileries, and even penetrates into the Chamber. "To the lamp post with all those who refuse!" On the 27th of September, 1790, M. Dupont, economist, having spoken against the assignats, is surrounded on leaving the Chamber and hooted at, hustled, pushed against the basin of the Tuileries, into which he was being thrown when the guard rescued him. On the 21st of June, 1790, M. de Cazales just misses "being torn to pieces by the people."[2140] Deputies of the "right" are threatened over and over again by gestures in the streets and in the coffee-houses; effigies of them with ropes about the neck are publicly displayed. The Abbe Maury is several times on the point of being hung: he saves himself once by presenting a pistol. Another time the Vicomte de Mirabeau is obliged to draw his sword. M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, having voted against the annexation of the Comtat to France, is assailed with chairs and clubs in the Palais-Royal, pursued into a porter's room and from thence to his dwelling; the howling crowd break in the doors, and are only repelled with great difficulty. It is impossible for the members of the "right" to assemble together; they are "stoned" in the church of the Capuchins, then in the Salon Francais in the Rue Royale, and then, to crown the whole, an ordinance of the new judges shuts up their hall, and punishes them for the violence which they have to suffer.[2141] In short they are at the mercy of the mob. The most moderate, the most liberal, and the most manly both in heart and head, Malouet, declares that "in going to the Assembly he rarely forgot to carry his pistols with him."[2142] "For two years," he says, "after the King's flight, we never enjoyed one moment of freedom and security."

" On going into a slaughter-house," writes another deputy, "you see some animals at the entrance which still have a short time to live, until the hour comes to dispatch them. Such was the impression which the assemblage of nobles, bishops, and parliamentarians[2143] on the right side made on my mind every time I entered the Assembly, the executioners of the left side permitting them to breathe a little longer."

They are insulted and outraged even upon their benches; "placed between peril within and peril without, between the hostility of the galleries,"[2144] and that of the howlers at the entrance, "between personal insults and the abbey of Saint-Germain, between shouts of laughter celebrating the burning of their chateaux and the clamors which, thirty times in a quarter of an hour, cry down their opinions," they are given over and denounced "to the ten thousand Cerberuses" of the journals and of the streets, who pursue them with their yells and "cover them with their slaver." Any expedient is good enough for putting down their opposition, and, at the end of the session, in full Assembly, they are threatened with "a recommendation to the departments," which means the excitement of riots and of the permanent jacquerie of the provinces against them in their own houses.—Parliamentary strategy of this sort, employed uninterruptedly for twenty-nine months, finally produces its effect. Many of the weak are gained over;[2145] even on characters of firm temper fear has a hold; he who would march under fire with head erect shuddered at the idea of being dragged in the gutter by the rabble; the brutality of the populace always exercises a material ascendancy over finely strung nerves. On the 12th of July, 1791,[2146] the call of the house decreed against the absentees proves that one hundred and thirty-two deputies no longer appear in their places. Eleven days before, among those who take no further part in the proceedings. Thus, before the completion of the Constitution, the whole of the opposition, more than four hundred members, over one-third of the Assembly, is reduced to flight or to silence. By dint of oppression, the revolutionary party has got rid of all resistance, while the violence which gave to it ascendancy in the streets, now gives to it equal ascendance within the walls of Parliament.



IV.—Refusal to supply the ministry

Effects of this mistake—Misconception of the situation—The committee of investigation—Constant alarms—Effects of ignorance and fear on the work of the Constituent Assembly.

Generally in an omnipotent assembly, when a party takes the lead and forms a majority, it furnishes the Ministry; and this fact suffices to give, or to bring back to it, some glimpse of common sense. For its leaders, with the Government in their own hands, become responsible for it, and when they propose or pass a law, they are obliged to anticipate its effect. Rarely will a Secretary of War or of the Navy adopt a military code which goes to establish permanent disobedience in the army or in the navy. Rarely will a Secretary of the Treasury propose an expenditure for which there is not a sufficient revenue, or a system of taxation that provides no returns. Placed where full information can be procured, daily advised of every details, surrounded by skillful counselors and expert clerks, the chiefs of the majority, who thus become heads of the administration, immediately drop theory for practice; and the fumes of political speculation must be pretty dense in their minds if they exclude the multiplied rays of light which experience constantly sheds upon them. Let the most stubborn of theorists take his stand at the helm of a ship, and, whatever be the obstinacy of his principles or his prejudices, he will never, unless he is blind or led by the blind, persist in steering always to the right or always to the left. Just so after the flight to Varennes, when the Assembly, in full possession of the executive power, directly controls the Ministry, it comes to recognize for itself that its constitutional machine will not work, except in the way of destruction; and it is the principal revolutionaries, Barnave, Duport, the Lameths, Chapelier, and Thouret,[2147] who undertake to make alterations in the mechanisms so as to lessen its friction. But this source of knowledge and reason, however, to which they are momentarily induced to draw, in spite of themselves and too late, has been turned off by themselves from the very beginning. On the 6th of November, 1789, in deference to principle and in dread of corruption, the Assembly had declared that none of its members should hold ministerial office. We see it in consequence deprived of all the instruction which comes from direct contact with affairs, surrendered without any counterpoise to the seductions of theory, reduced by its own decision to become a mere academy of legislation only.

Nay, still worse, through another effect of the same error, it condemns itself by its own act to constant fits of panic. For, having allowed the power which it was not willing to assume to slip into indifferent or suspect hands, it is always uneasy, and all its decrees bear an uniform stamp, not only of the willful ignorance within which it confines itself, but also of the exaggerated or chimerical fears in which its life is passed.—Imagine a ship conveying a company of lawyers, literary men, and other passengers, who, supported by a mutinous and poorly fed crew, take full command, but refuse to select one of their own number for a pilot or for the officer of the watch. The former captain continues to nominate them; through very shame, and because he is a good sort of man, his title is left to him, and he is retained for the transmission of orders. If these orders are absurd, so much the worse for him; if he resists them, a fresh mutiny forces him to yield; and even when they cannot be executed, he has to answer for their being carried out. In the meantime, in a room between decks, far away from the helm and the compass, our club of amateurs discuss the equilibrium of floating bodies, decree a new system of navigation, have the ballast thrown overboard, crowd on all sail, and are astonished to find that the ship heels over on its side. The officer of the watch and the pilot must, evidently, have managed the maneuver badly. They are accordingly dismissed and others put in their place, while the ship heels over farther yet and begins to leak in every joint. Enough: it is the fault of the captain and the old staff of officers, They are not well-disposed; for a beautiful system of navigation like this ought to work well; and if it fails to do so, it is because some one interferes with it. It is positively certain that some of those people belonging to the former regime must be traitors, who would rather have the ship go down than submit; they are public enemies and monsters. They must be seized, disarmed, put under surveillance, and punished.—Such is the reasoning of the Assembly. Evidently, to reassure it, a message from the Minister of the Interior chosen by the Assembly, to the lieutenant of police whom he had appointed, to come to his office every morning, would be all that was necessary. But it is deprived of this simple resource by its own act, and has no other expedient than to appoint a committee of investigation to discover crimes of "treason against the nation."[2148] What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more mischievous than such an institution?—Renewed every month, deprived of special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouche, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobine inquisition.[2149] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'etat, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150] it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;[2151] then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others, week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the journalists, and which Desmoulins, Freron, and Marat reveal with a flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.

"All these alarms are cried daily in the streets like cabbages and turnips, the good people of Paris inhaling them along with the pestilential vapors of our mud."[2152]

..............Now, in this aspect, as well as in a good many others, the Assembly is the people; satisfied that it is in danger,[2153] it makes laws as the former make their insurrections, and protects itself by strokes of legislation as the former protects itself by blows with pikes. Failing to take hold of the motor spring by which it might direct the government machine, it distrusts all the old and all the new wheels. The old ones seem to it an obstacle, and, instead of utilizing them, it breaks them one by one—parliaments, provincial states, religious orders, the church, the nobles, and royalty. The new ones are suspicious, and instead of harmonizing them, it puts them out of gear in advance—the executive power, administrative powers, judicial powers, the police, the gendarmerie, and the army.[2154] Thanks to these precautions it is impossible for any of them to be turned against itself; but, also, thanks to these precautions, none of them can perform their functions.[2155]

In building, as well as in destroying, the Assembly had two bad counselors, on the one hand fear, on the other hand theory; and on the ruins of the old machine which it had demolished without discernment, the new machine, which it has constructed without forecast, will work only to its own ruin.

*****

[Footnote 2101: Arthur Young, June 15, 1789.—Bailly, passim,—Moniteur, IV. 522 (June 2, 1790).—Mercure de France (Feb. 11 1792).]

[Footnote 2102: Moniteur, v. 631 (Sep. 12, 1790), and September 8th (what is said by the Abbe Maury).—Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Bailly, I. 227.]

[Footnote 2103: Sir Samuel Romilly, "Memoires," I. 102, 354.—Dumont, 158. (The official rules bear are dated July 29, 1789.)]

[Footnote 2104: Cf. Ferrieres, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]

[Footnote 2105: Letter from Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790 See page 382, "A diary of the French revolution", Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. 1972.—Dumont 125—Garat, letter to Condorcet.]

[Footnote 2106: Arthur Young, I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little argument."—Cabinet des Estampes. See engravings of the day by Moreau, Prieur, Monet, representing the opening of the States-General. All the figures have a graceful, elegant, and genteel air.]

[Footnote 2107: Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—Ferrieres, I. 19.]

[Footnote 2108: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—Likewise (De Ferrieres, I.71) the decree on the abolition of nobility was not the order of the day, and was carried by surprise.]

[Footnote 2109: Ferrieres, I. 189.—Dumont, 146.]

[Footnote 2110: Letter of Mirabeau to Sieyes, June 11, 1790. "Our nation of monkeys with the throats of parrots."—Dumont, 146. "Sieyes and Mirabeau always entertained a contemptible opinion of the Constituent Assembly."]

[Footnote 2111: Moniteur, I, 256, 431 (July 16 and 31, 1789).—Journal des Debats et Decrets, 105, July 16th "A member demands that M. de Lally should put his speech in writing. The whole Assembly has repeated this request."]

[Footnote 2112: Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. Mande, brought to the bar of the house, thanks the Assembly for the decree by which the cloisters are opened, and denounces the tricks, intrigues, and even violence exercised in the convents to prevent the execution of the decree."—Ibid. March 29, 1790. See the various addresses which are read. "At Lagnon, the mother of a family assembled her ten children, and swore with them and for them to be loyal to the nation and to the King."—Ibid. June 5, 1790. "M. Chambroud reads the letter of the collector of customs of Lannion, in Brittany, to a priest, a member of the National Assembly. He implores his influence to secure the acceptance of his civic oath and that of all his family, ready to wield either the censer, the cart, the scales, the sword, or the pen." On reading a number of these addresses the Assembly appears to be a supplement of the Petites Affiches (a small advertising journal in Paris).]

[Footnote 2113: Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]

[Footnote 2114: A well-known writer of children's stories.— 21Tr.]

[Footnote 2115: Ferrieres, II. 65 (June 10,1790).—De Montlosier, I. 402. "One of these puppets came the following day to get his money of the Comte de Billancourt, mistaking him for the Duc de Liancourt. 'Monsieur,' says he, 'I am the man who played the Chaldean yesterday.'"]

[Footnote 2116: Buchez and Roux, X. 118 (June 16, 1791).]

[Footnote 2117: See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of their baillage or senechaussee, quality, condition, and profession.]

[Footnote 2118: De Bouille, 75.—When the King first saw the list of the deputies, he exclaimed," What would the nation have said if I had made up my council or the Notables in this way?" (Buchez and Roux, IV. 39.)]

[Footnote 2119: Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789.]

[Footnote 2120: Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.—Lafayette, "Memoires," V. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.—Arthur Young, June 27 and 29, 1789.]

[Footnote 2121: Morris, July 1, 1789.]

[Footnote 2122: Morris, July 4, 1789.]

[Footnote 2123: Mallet du Pan, Mercure, September 26, 1789.]

[Footnote 2124: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790.]

[Footnote 2125: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

[Footnote 2126: Sir Samuel. Romilly, "Memoirs," I. 102. "It was their constant course first, decree the principle and leave the drawing up of what they had so resolved (or, as they called it, la redaction) for later. It is astonishing how great an influence it had on their debates and measures".—Ibid. I. 354. Letter by Dumont, June 2, 1789. "They prefer their own folly to all the results of British experience. They revolt at the idea of borrowing anything from our government, which is scoffed at here as one of the iniquities of human reason; although they admit that you have two or three good laws; but that you should presume to have a constitution is not to be sustained."]

[Footnote 2127: Dumont, 138, 151.]

[Footnote 2128: Morris, January 24, 1790.]

[Footnote 2129: Marmontel, XII. 265.—Ferrieres,. I. 48 II. 50, 58, 126.—Dumont, 74.]

[Footnote 2130: Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—According to Ferrieres this party comprised about three hundred members.]

[Footnote 2131: Here Ambassador Morris describes the kind of man who should form the backbone of all later revolutions whether communist or fascist ones. (SR.)]

[Footnote 2132: Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

[Footnote 2133: De Lavergne, "Les Assemblees Provinciales," 384. Deliberations of the States of Dauphiny, drawn up by Mournier and signed by two hundred gentlemen (July, 1788). "The rights of man are derived from nature alone, and are independent of human conventions."]

[Footnote 2134: Report by Merlin de Douai, February 8, 1790, p.2.—Malouet, II, 51.]

[Footnote 2135: Dumont, 133.—De Montlosier, I, 355, 361.]

[Footnote 2136: Bertrand de Molleville, II. 221 (according to a police report).—Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution," I. 215. (Report of the agent Dutard, May 13, 1793)—Lacretelle, "Dix Ans d'Epreuves," p.35. "It was about midnight when we went out in the rain, sleet, and snow, in the piercing cold, to the church of the Feuillants, to secure places for the galleries of the Assembly, which we were not to occupy till noon on the following day. We were obliged, moreover, to contend for them with a crowd animated by passions, and even by interests, very different from our own. We were not long in perceiving that a considerable part of the galleries was under pay, and that the scenes of cruelty which gave pain to us were joy to them. I cannot express the horror I felt on hearing those women, since called tricoteuses, take a delight in the already homicidal doctrines of Robespierre, enjoying his sharp voice and feasting their eyes on his ugly face, the living type of envy." (The first months of 1790.)]

[Footnote 2137: Moniteur, V. 237 (July 26, 1790); V. 594. (September 8, 1790); V. 631 (September 12, 1790); VI. 310 (October 6, 1790). (Letter of the Abbe Peretti.)]

[Footnote 2138: De Ferrieres, II. 75.—Moniteur, VI. 373 (September 6, 1790).—M. de Virieu. "Those who insult certain members and hinder the freedom of debate by hooting or applause must be silenced. Is it the three hundred spectators who are to be our judges, or the nation?" M. Chasset, President: "Monsieur opinionist, I call you to order. You speak of hindrances to a free vote; there has never been anything of the kind in this Assembly."]

[Footnote 2139: Sauzay, I 140. Letter of M. Lompre, liberal deputy, to M. Seguin, chanoine (towards the end of November, 1789). "The service becomes more difficult every day; we have become objects of popular fury, and, when no other resource was left to us to avoid the tempest but to get rid of the endowments of the clergy, we yielded to force. It had become a pressing necessity, and I should have been sorry to have had you still here, exposed to the outrages and violence with which I have been repeatedly threatened."]

[Footnote 2140: Mercure de France, Nos. of January 15, 1791; October 2, 1790; May 14,1791.—Buchez and Roux, V. 343 (April 13, 1790); VII. 76 (September 2, 1790); X. 225 ( June 21, 1791).—De Montlosier, I. 357.—Moniteur, IV, 427.]

[Footnote 2141: Archives of the Police, exposed by the Committee of the district of Saint-Roch. Judgment of the Police Tribunal, May 15, 1790.]

[Footnote 2142: Malouet, II. 68.—De Montlosier, II. 217, 257 (Speech of M. Lavie, September 18, 1791).]

[Footnote 2143: I.e. members of the old local parlements.]

[Footnote 2144: Mercure, October 1, 1791. (Article by Mallet du Pan.)]

[Footnote 2145: Malouet II. 66. "Those only who were not intimidated by insults or threats, nor by actual blows, could come forward as opponents."]

[Footnote 2146: Buchez and Roux, X. 432, 465.]

[Footnote 2147: Malouet, II, 153.]

[Footnote 2148: Decrees of July 23rd and 28th, 1789.—"Archives Nationales." Papers of Committee of Investigation, passim. Among other affairs see that of Madame de Persan (Moniteur, V. 611, sitting of September 9, 1790), and that of Malouet ("Memoires" II. 12).]

[Footnote 2149: Buchez and Roux, IV. 56 (Report of Garan de Coulon); V. 49 (Decision of the Committee of Investigation, December 28, 1789).]

[Footnote 2150: The arrests of M. de Riolles, M. de Bussy, etc., of Madame de Jumilhac, of two other ladies, one at Bar-le-Duc and the other of Nancy, etc.]

[Footnote 2151: Sitting of July 28, 1789, the speeches of Duport and Rewbell, etc.—Mercure, No. of January 1, 1791 (article by Mallet du Pan).—Buchez and Roux, V. 146l "Behold five or six successive conspiracies—that of the sacks of flour, that of the sacks of money, etc." (Article by Camille Desmoulins.)]

[Footnote 2152: "Archives de la Prefecture de Police." Extract from the registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-General of the district of Saint-Roch, October 10 1789: Arrete: to request all the men in the commune to devote themselves, with all the prudence, activity, and force of which they are capable, to the discovery, exposure, and publication of the horrible plots and infernal treachery which are constantly meditated against the inhabitants of the capital; to denounce to the public the authors, abettors, and adherents of the said plots, whatever their rank may be; to secure their persons and insure their punishment with all the rigor which outrages of this kind call for. The commandant of the battalion and the district captains come daily to consult with the committee. "While the alarm lasts, the first story of each house is to be lighted with lamps during the night: all citizens of the district are requested to be at home by ten o'clock in the evening at the latest, unless they should be on duty... . All citizens are invited to communicate whatever they may learn or discover in relation to the abominable plots which are secretly going on in the capital."]

[Footnote 2153: Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 ("Actes des Apotres," V. 56). "During these two nights (July 13th and 14th, 1789) that we remained in session I heard one deputy try to get it believed that an artillery corps had been ordered to point its guns against our hall; another, that it was undermined, and that it was to be blown up; another went so far as to declare that he smelt powder, upon which M. le Comte de Virieu replied that power had no odor until it was burnt."]

[Footnote 2154: Dumont, 351. "Each constitutional law was a party triumph."]

[Footnote 2155: Here Taine indicates how subversive parties may proceed to weaken a nation prior to their take-over.(SR.)]