Behind their carmagnoles2363 we can detect a design which they will avow later on.

"We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say, "and nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."2364

Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, are simply pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the conquests of power, a second internal revolution, the application of their system and a final state of equality.—Concealed behind them is the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man "whose great art is the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that of speaking but little in public and acting in secret."2365 This man is SieyÈs, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead anything."2366 As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations, but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli in the selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy.

"His pride tolerates no superiority. He causes nobility to be abolished because he is not a noble; because he does not possess all he will destroy all. His fundamental doctrine for the consolidation of the Revolution is, that it is indispensable to change religion and to change the dynasty."

Now, had peace been maintained all this was impossible; moreover the ascendance of the party was compromised. Entire classes that had adhered to the party when it launched insurrection against the privileged, broke loose from it now that insurrection was directed against them; among thoughtful men and among those with property, most were disgusted with anarchy, and likewise disgusted with the abettors of it. Many administrators, magistrates and functionaries recently elected, loudly complained of their authority being subject to the mob. Many cultivators, manufacturers and merchants have become silently exasperated at the fruits of their labor and economy being surrendered at discretion to robbers and the indigent. It was hard for the flour-dealers of Etampes not to dare send away their wheat, to be obliged to supply customers at night, to tremble in their own houses, and to know that if they went out-doors they risked their lives.2367 It was hard for wholesale grocers in Paris to see their warehouses invaded, their windows smashed, their bags of coffee and boxes of sugar valued at a low price, parceled out and carried away by old hags or taken gratis by scamps who ran off and sold them at the other end of the street.2368 It was hard in all places for the families of the old bourgeoisie, for the formerly prominent men in each town and village, for the eminent in each art, profession or trade, for reputable and well-to-do people, in short, for the majority of men who had a good roof over their heads and a good coat on their backs, to undergo the illegal domination of a crowd led by a few hundred or dozens of stump-speakers and firebrands.—Already, in the beginning of 1792, this dissatisfaction was so great as to be denounced in the tribune and in the press. Isnard2369 railed against "that multitude of large property-holders, those opulent merchants, those haughty, wealthy personages who, advantageously placed in the social amphitheater, are unwilling to have their seats changed." The bourgeoisie," wrote PÉtion,2370 "that numerous class free of any anxiety, is separating itself from the people; it considers itself above them,... they are the sole object of its distrust. It is everywhere haunted by the one idea that the revolution is a war between those who have and those who have not."—It abstains, indeed, from the elections, it keeps away from patriotic clubs, it demands the restoration of order and the reign of law; it rallies to itself "the multitude of conservative, timid people, for whom tranquility is the prime necessity," and especially, which is still more serious, it charges the disturbances upon their veritable authors. With suppressed indignation and a mass of undisputed evidence, AndrÉ ChÉnier, a man of feeling, starts up in the midst of the silent crowd and openly tears off the mask from the Jacobins.2371 He brings into full light the daily sophism by which a mob, "some hundreds of idlers gathered in a garden or at a theater, are impudently called the people." He portrays those "three or four thousand usurpers of national sovereignty whom their orators and writers daily intoxicate with grosser incense than any adulation offered to the worst of despots;" those assemblies where "an infinitely small number of French appears large, because they are united and yell;" that Paris club from which honest, industrious, intelligent people had withdrawn one by one to give place to intriguers in debt, to persons of tarnished reputations, to the hypocrites of patriotism, to the lovers of uproar, to abortive talents, to corrupted intellects, to outcasts of every kind and degree who, unable to manage their own business, indemnify themselves by managing that of the public. He shows how, around the central factory and its twelve hundred branches of insurrection, the twelve hundred affiliated clubs, which, "holding each other's hands, form a sort of electric chain around all France" and giving it a shock at every touch from the center; their confederation, installed and enthroned, is not only as a State within the State, but rather as a sovereign State in a vassal State; summoning their administrative bodies to their bar, judicial verdicts set aside through their intervention, private individuals searched, assessed and condemned through their verdicts. All this constitutes a steady, systematic defense of insubordination and revolt; as, "under the name of hoarding and monopoly, commerce and industry are described as misdemeanors;" property is unsettled and every rich man rendered suspicious, "talent and integrity silenced." In short, a public conspiracy made against society in the very name of society, "while the sacred symbol of liberty is made use of as a seal" to exempt a few tyrants from punishment. Such a protest said aloud what most Frenchmen muttered to themselves, and from month to month, graver excesses exited greater censure.

"Anarchy exists2372 to a degree scarcely to be paralleled, wrote the ambassador of the United States. The horror and apprehension, which the licentious associations have universally inspired, are such that there is reason to believe that the great mass of the French population would consider even despotism a blessing, if accompanied with that security to persons and property, experienced even under the worst governments in Europe."

Another observer, not less competent,2373 says:

"it is plain to my eyes that when Louis XVI. finally succumbed, he had more partisans in France than the year previous, at the time of his flight to Varennes."

The truth of this, indeed, was frequently verified at the end of 1791 and beginning of 1792, by various investigations.2374 "Eighteen thousand officers of every grade, elected by the constitutionalists, seventy-one department administrations out of eighty-two, most of the tribunals,2375 all traders and manufacturers, every chief and a large portion of the National Guard of Paris," in short, the Élite of the nation, and among citizens generally, the great majority who lived from day to day were for him, and for the "Right" of the Assembly against the "Left". If internal trouble had not been complicated by external difficulties, there would have been a change in opinion, and this the King expected. In accepting the Constitution, he thought that its defects would be revealed in practical operation and that they would lead to a reform. In the mean time he scrupulously observed the Constitution, and, through interest as well as conscience, kept his oath to the letter. "The most faithful execution of the Constitution," he said to one of his ministers, "is the surest way to make the nation see the changes that ought to be made in it."2376—In other words, he counted on experience, and it is very probable that if there had been nothing to interfere with experience, his calculations would have finally chosen between the defenders of order and the instigators of disorder. It would have decided for the magistrates against the clubs, for the police against rioters, for the king against the mob. In one or two years more it would have learned that a restoration of the executive power was indispensable for securing the execution of the laws; that the chief of police, with his hands tied, could not do his duty; that it was undoubtedly wise to give him his orders, but that if he was to be of any use against knaves and fools, his hands should first be set free.