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 rÉgime 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 FouchÉ, 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'État, 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, FrÉron, 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.

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

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

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

2104 (return)
[ Cf. FerriÈres, I. 3. His repentance is affecting.]

2105 (return)
[ 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.]

2106 (return)
[ 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.]

2107 (return)
[ Marmontel, book XIII. 237.—Malouet, I. 261.—FerriÈres, I. 19.]

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

2109 (return)
[ FerriÈres, I. 189.—Dumont, 146.]

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

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

2112 (return)
[ Moniteur. (March 11, 1790). "A nun of St. MandÉ, 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).]

2113 (return)
[ Moniteur, October 23, 1789.]

2114 (return)
[ A well-known writer of children's stories.— 21Tr.]

2115 (return)
[ FerriÈres, 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.'"]

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

2117 (return)
[ See the printed list of deputies, with the indication of their baillage or sÉnÉchaussÉe, quality, condition, and profession.]

2118 (return)
[ De BouillÉ, 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.)]

2119 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, July 31, 1789.]

2120 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, February 25, 1789.—Lafayette, "MÉmoires," V. 492. Letter of Jefferson, February 14, 1815.—Arthur Young, June 27 and 29, 1789.]

2121 (return)
[ Morris, July 1, 1789.]

2122 (return)
[ Morris, July 4, 1789.]

2123 (return)
[ Mallet du Pan, Mercure, September 26, 1789.]

2124 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790; November 22, 1790.]

2125 (return)
[ Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

2126 (return)
[ Sir Samuel. Romilly, "MÉmoirs," 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 rÉdaction) 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."]

2127 (return)
[ Dumont, 138, 151.]

2128 (return)
[ Morris, January 24, 1790.]

2129 (return)
[ Marmontel, XII. 265.—FerriÈres,. I. 48¸ II. 50, 58, 126.—Dumont, 74.]

2130 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, January 24, 1790.—According to FerriÈres this party comprised about three hundred members.]

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

2132 (return)
[ Dumont, 33, 58, 62.]

2133 (return)
[ De Lavergne, "Les AssemblÉes 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."]

2134 (return)
[ Report by Merlin de Douai, February 8, 1790, p.2.—Malouet, II, 51.]

2135 (return)
[ Dumont, 133.—De Montlosier, I, 355, 361.]

2136 (return)
[ Bertrand de Molleville, II. 221 (according to a police report).—Schmidt, "Tableaux de la RÉvolution," 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.)]

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

2138 (return)
[ De FerriÈres, 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."]

2139 (return)
[ Sauzay, I 140. Letter of M. LomprÉ, liberal deputy, to M. SÉguin, 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."]

2140 (return)
[ 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.]

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

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

2143 (return)
[ I.e. members of the old local parlements.]

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

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

2146 (return)
[ Buchez and Roux, X. 432, 465.]

2147 (return)
[ Malouet, II, 153.]

2148 (return)
[ 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 ("MÉmoires" II. 12).]

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

2150 (return)
[ 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.]

2151 (return)
[ 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.)]

2152 (return)
[ "Archives de la PrÉfecture de Police." Extract from the registers of the deliberations of the Conseil-GÉnÉral of the district of Saint-Roch, October 10 1789: ArrÊte: 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."]

2153 (return)
[ Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31, 1790 ("Actes des ApÔtres," 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."]

2154 (return)
[ Dumont, 351. "Each constitutional law was a party triumph."]

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