CHAPTER II.

I.--Composition of the Legislative Assembly.

Social rank of the Deputies. Their inexperience, incompetence, and prejudices.

If it be true that a nation should be represented by its superior men, France was strangely represented during the Revolution. From one Assembly to another we see the level steadily declining; especially is the fall very great from the Constituent to the Legislative Assembly. The actors entitled to perform withdraw just as they begin to understand their parts; and yet more, they have excluded themselves from the theatre, while the stage is surrendered to their substitutes.

"The preceding Assembly," writes an ambassador, "contained men of great talent, large fortune, and honorable name, a combination which had an imposing effect on the people, although violently opposed to personal distinctions. The actual Assembly is but little more than a council of lawyers, got together from every town and village in France."

In actual fact, out of 745 deputies, indeed, "400 lawyers belong, for the most part, to the dregs of the profession"; there are about twenty constitutional priests, "as many poets and literary men of but little reputation, almost all without any fortune," the greater number being less than thirty years old, sixty being less than twenty-six, nearly all of them trained in the clubs and the popular assemblies". There is not one noble or prelate belonging to the ancient régime, no great landed proprietor, no head of a service, no eminent specialist in diplomacy, in finance, in the administrative or military arts. But three general officers are found there, and these are of the lower rank, one of them having held his appointment but three months, and the other two being wholly unknown.--At the head of the diplomatic committee stands Brissot, itinerant journalist, lately traveling about in England and the United States. He is supposed to be competent in the affairs of both worlds; in reality he is one of those presuming, threadbare, talkative fellows, who, living in a garret, lecture foreign cabinets and reconstruct all Europe. Things, to them, seem to be as easily worked out as words and sentences: one day, to entice the English into an alliance with France, Brissot proposes to place two towns, Dunkirk and Calais, in their hands as security; another day, he proposes "to make a descent on Spain, and, at the same time, to send a fleet to conquer Mexico."--The leading member on the committee on finances is Cambon, a merchant from Montpellier, a good accountant, who, at a later period, is to simplify accounting and regulate the Grand Livre of the public debt, which means public bankruptcy. Mean-while, he hastens this on with all his might by encouraging the Assembly to undertake the ruinous and terrible war that is to last for twenty-three years; according to him, "there is more money than is needed for it." In actual fact, the guarantee of assignats is used up and the taxes do not come in. They live only on the paper money they issue. The assignats lose forty per centum, and the ascertained deficit for 1792 is four hundred millions. But this revolutionary financier relies upon the confiscations which he instigates in France, and which are to be set agoing in Belgium; here lies all his invention, a systematic robbery on a grand scale within and without the kingdom.

As to the legislators and manufacturers of constitutions, we have Condorcet, a cold-blooded fanatic and systematic leveler, satisfied that a mathematical method suits the social sciences fed on abstractions, blinded by formuloe, and the most chimerical of perverted intellects. Never was a man versed in books more ignorant of mankind; never did a lover of scientific precision better succeed in changing the character of facts. It was he who, two days before the 20th of June, amidst the most brutal public excitement, admired "the calmness" and rationality of the multitude; "considering the way people interpret events, it might be supposed that they had given some hours of each day to the study of analysis." It is he who, two days after the 20th of June, extolled the red cap in which the head of Louis XVI. had been muffled. "That crown is as good as any other. Marcus Aurelius would not have despised it."--Such is the discernment and practical judgment of the leaders; from these one can form an opinion of the flock. It consists of novices arriving from the provinces and bringing with them the principles and prejudices of the newspaper. So remote from the center, having no knowledge of general affairs or of their unity, they are two years behind their brethren of the Constituent Assembly. They are described in the following manner by Malouet,

"Most of them, without having decided against a monarchy, had decided against the court, the aristocracy, and the clergy, ever imagining conspiracies and believing that defense consisted solely in attack. There were still many men of talent among them, but with no experience; they even lacked that which we had obtained. Our patriot deputies, in great part, were aware of their errors; the novices were not, they were ready to begin all over again."

Moreover, they have their own political bent, for nearly all of them are upstarts of the new régime. We find in their ranks 264 department administrators, 109 district administrators, 125 justices and prosecuting-attorneys, 68 mayors and town officers, besides about twenty officers of the National Guard, constitutional bishops and curés. The whole amounting to 566 of the elected functionaries, who, for the past twenty months, have carried on the government under the direction of their electors. We have seen how this was done and under what conditions, with what compliances and with what complicity, with what deference to clamorous opinion, with what docility in the presence of rioters, with what submission to the orders of the mob, with what a deluge of sentimental phrases and commonplace abstractions. Sent to Paris as deputies, through the choice or toleration of the clubs, they bear along with them their politics and their rhetoric. The result is an assemblage of narrow, perverted, hasty, inflated and feeble minds; at each daily session, twenty word-mills turn to no purpose, the greatest of public powers at once becoming a manufactory of nonsense, a school of extravagancies, and a theatre for declamation.

II.--Degree and quality of their intelligence and Culture.

Is it possible that serious men could have listened to such weird nonsense until the bitter end?

"I am a tiller of the soil," says one deputy, "I now dare speak of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good ancestors executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any species of revolution whatever."

Is it conceivable that the reporter of a law, that is about to exile or imprison forty thousand priests, should employ in an argument such silly bombast as the following?

"I have seen in the rural districts the hymeneal torch diffusing only pale and somber rays, or, transformed into the flambeaux of furies, the hideous skeleton of superstition seated even on the nuptial couch, placed between nature and the wedded, and arresting, etc.... Oh Rome, art thou satisfied? Art thou then like Saturn, to whom fresh holocausts were daily imperative?... Depart, ye creators of discord! The soil of liberty is weary of bearing you. Would ye breathe the atmosphere of the Aventine mount? The national ship is already prepared for you. I hear on the shore the impatient cries of the crew; I see the breezes of liberty swelling its sails. Like Telemachus, ye will go forth on the waters to seek your father; but never will you have to dread the Sicilian rocks, nor the seductions of a Eucharis."

Courtesies of pedants, rhetorical personifications, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high-sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds are stimulated by souvenirs of their school lessons, the modern world revealing itself to them only through their Latin reminiscences.--François de Nantes is exasperated at the pope "who holds in servitude the posterity of Cato and of Scoevola."--Isnard proposes to follow the example of the Roman senate which, to allay discord at home, got up an outside war: between old Rome and France of 1792, indeed, there is a striking resemblance.--Roux insists that the Emperor (of Austria) should give satisfaction before the 1st of March; "in a case like this the Roman people would have fixed the term of delay; why shouldn't the French people fix one?..." "The circle of Popilius" should be drawn around those petty, hesitating German princes. When money is needed to establish camps around Paris and the large towns, Lasource proposes to dispose of the national forests and is amazed at any objection to the measure. "Coesar's soldiers," he exclaims, "believing that an ancient forest in Gaul was sacred, dared not lay the axe to it; are we to share their superstitious respect?"--Add to this collegiate lore the philosophic dregs deposited in all minds by the great sophist then in vogue. Larivière reads in the tribune that page of the "Contrat Social," where Rousseau declares that the sovereign may banish members "of an unsocial religion," and punish with death "one who, having publicly recognized the dogmas of civil religion, acts as if he did not believe in them." On which, another hissing parrot, M. Filassier, exclaims, "I put J. J. Rousseau's proposition into the form of a motion and demand a vote on it."--In like manner it is proposed to grant very young girls the right of marrying in spite of their parents by stating, according to the "Nouvelle Héloise"

"that a girl thirteen or fourteen years old begins to sigh for the union which nature dictates. She struggles between passion and duty, so that, if she triumphs, she becomes a martyr, something that is rare in nature. It may happen that a young person prefers the serene shame of defeat to a wearisome eight year long struggle."

Divorce is inaugurated to "preserve in matrimony that happy peace of mind which renders the sentiments livelier." Henceforth this will no longer be a chain but "the acquittance of an agreeable debt which every citizen owes to his country... Divorce is the protecting spirit of marriage."

On a background of classic pedantry, with only vague and narrow notions of ordinary instruction, lacking exact and substantial information, flow obscenities and enlarged commonplaces enveloped in a mythological gauze, spouting in long tirades as maxims from the revolutionary manual. Such is the superficial culture and verbal argumentation from which vulgar and dangerous ingredients the intelligence of the new legislators is formed.

III.--Aspects of their sessions.

Scenes and display at the club.--Co-operation of spectators.

From this we can imagine what their sessions were. "More in-coherent and especially more passionate than those of the Constituent Assembly" they present the same but intensified characteristics. The argument is weaker, the invective more violent, and the dogmatism more intemperate. Inflexibility degenerates into insolence, prejudice into fanaticism, and near-sightedness into blindness. Disorder becomes a tumult and constant din an uproar. Suppose, says an eye-witness,

"a classroom with hundreds of pupils quarreling and every instant on the point of seizing each other by the hair. Their dress neglected, their attitudes angry, with sudden transitions from shouting to hooting.. is a sight hard to imagine and to which nothing can be compared."

It lacks nothing for making it a club of the lowest species. Here, in advance, we contemplate the ways of the future revolutionary inquisition. They welcome burlesque denunciations; enter into petty police investigations; weigh the tittle-tattle of porters and the gossip of servant-girls; devote an all-night session to the secrets of a drunkard. They enter on their official report and without any disapproval, the petition of M. Huré, "living at Pont-sur-Yonne, who, over his own signature, offers one hundred francs and his arm to become a killer of tyrants." Repeated and multiplied hurrahs and applause with the felicitations of the president is the sanction of scandalous or ridiculous private misconduct seeking to display itself under the cover of public authority. Anacharsis Clootz, "a Mascarille officially stamped," who proposes a general war and who hawks about maps of Europe cut up in advance into departments beginning with Savoy, Belgium and Holland "and thus onward to the Polar Sea," is thanked and given a seat on the benches of the Assembly. Compliments are made to the Vicar of Sainte-Marguerite and his wife is given a seat in the Assembly and who, introducing "his new family," thunders against clerical celibacy. Crowds of men and women are permitted to traverse the hall letting out political cries. Every sort of indecent, childish and seditious parade is admitted to the bar of the house. To-day it consists of "citoyennes of Paris," desirous of being drilled in military exercises and of having for their commandants "former French guardsmen;" to-morrow children come and express their patriotism with "touching simplicity," regretting that "their trembling feet do not permit them to march, no, fly against the tyrants;" next to these come convicts of the Château--Vieux escorted by a noisy crowd; at another time the artillerymen of Paris, a thousand in number, with drums beating; delegates from the provinces, the faubourgs and the clubs come constantly, with their furious harangues, and imperious remonstrances, their exactions, their threats and their summonses.--In the intervals between the louder racket a continuous hubbub is heard in the clatter of the tribunes. At each session "the representatives are chaffed by the spectators; the nation in the gallery is judge of the nation on the floor;" it interferes in the debates, silences the speakers, insults the president and orders the reporter of a bill to quit the tribune. One interruption, or a simple murmur, is not all; there are twenty, thirty, fifty in an hour, clamoring, stamping, yells and personal abuse. After countless useless entreaties, after repeated calls to order, "received with hooting," after a dozen "regulations that are made, revised, countermanded and posted up" as if better to prove the impotence of the law, of the authorities and of the Assembly itself, the usurpations of these intruders keep on increasing. They have shouted for ten months "Down with the civil list! Down with the ministerials! Down with those curs! Silence, slaves!' On the 26th of July, Brissot himself is to appear lukewarm and be struck on the face with two plums. "Three or four hundred individuals without either property, title, or means of subsistence... have become the auxiliaries, petitioners and umpires of the legislature," their paid violence completely destroying whatever is still left of the Assembly's reason.

IV.--The Parties.

The "Right."--"Center."--The "Left."--Opinions and sentiments of the Girondins.--Their Allies of the extreme "left."

In an assembly thus composed and surrounded, it is easy to foresee on which side the balance will turn.--Through the meshes of the electoral net which the Jacobins have spread over the whole country, about one hundred well-meaning individuals of the common run, tolerably sensible and sufficiently resolute, Mathieu Dumas, Dumolard, Becquet, Gorguereau, Vaublanc, Beugnot, Girardin, Ramond, Jaucourt, were able to pass and form the party of the "Right." They resist to as great an extent as possible, and seem to have obtained a majority.--For, of the four hundred deputies who have their seats in the center, one hundred and sixty-four are inscribed on the rolls with them at the Feuillants club, while the rest, under the title of "Independents," pretend to be of no party. Besides, the whole of these four hundred, through monarchical traditions, respect the King; timid and sensible, violence is repugnant to them. They distrust the Jacobins, dread what is unknown, desire to be loyal to the Constitution and to live in peace. Nevertheless, the pompous dogmas of the revolutionary catechism still have their prestige with them; they cannot comprehend how the Constitution which they like produces the anarchy which they detest; they are "foolish enough to bemoan the effects while swearing to maintain their causes; totally deficient in spirit, in union and in boldness," they float backwards and forwards between contradictory desires, while their predisposition to order merely awaits the steady impulsion of a vigorous will to turn it in the opposite direction.--On such docile material the "Left" can work effectively. It comprises, indeed, but one hundred and thirty-six registered Jacobins and about a hundred others who, in almost all cases, vote with the party; rigidity of opinion, however, more than compensates for lack of numbers. In the front row are Guadet, Brissot, Gensonné, Veygniaud, Ducos, and Condorcet, the future chiefs of the Girondists, all of them lawyers or writers captivated by deductive politics, absolute in their convictions and proud of their faith. According to them principles are true and must be applied without reservation; whoever would stop half-way is wanting in courage or intelligence. As for themselves their minds are made up to push through. With the self-confidence of youth and of theorists they draw their own conclusions and hug themselves with their strong belief in them. "These gentlemen," says a keen observer,

"professed great disdain for their predecessors, the Constituents, treating them as short-sighted and prejudiced people incapable of profiting by circumstances."

"To the observations of wisdom, and disinterested wisdom, they replied with a scornful smile, indicative of the aridity proceeding from self-conceit. One exhausted himself in reminding them of events and in deducing causes from these; one passed in turn from theory to experience and from experience to theory to show them their identity and, when they condescended to reply it was to deny the best authenticated facts and contest the plainest observations by opposing to these a few trite maxims although eloquently expressed. Each regarded the other as if they alone were worthy of being heard, each encouraging the other with the idea that all resistance to their way of looking at things was pusillanimity."

In their own eyes they alone are capable and they alone are patriotic. Because they have read Rousseau and Mably, because their tongue is untied and their pen flowing, because they know how to handle the formuloe of books and reason out an abstract proposition, they fancy that they are statesmen. Because they have read Plutarch and "Le Jeune Anacharsis," because they aim to construct a perfect society out of metaphysical conceptions, because they are in a ferment about the coming millennium, they imagine themselves so many exalted spirits. They have no doubt whatever on these two points even after everything has fallen in through their blunders, even after their obliging hands are sullied by the foul grasp of robbers whom they were the first to instigate, and by that of executioners of which they are partners in complicity. To this extent is self-conceit the worst of sophists. Convinced of their superior enlightenment and of the purity of their sentiments, they put forth the theory that the government should be in their hands. Consequently they lay hold of it in the Legislative body in ways that are going to turn against them in the Convention. They accept for allies the worst demagogues of the extreme "Left," Chabot, Couthon, Merlin, Bazière, Thuriot, Lecointre, and outside of it, Danton, Robespierre, Marat himself, all the levelers and destroyers whom they think of use to them, but of whom they themselves are the instruments. The motions they make must pass at any cost and, to ensure this, they let loose against their adversaries the low, yelping mob which others, still more factious, will to-morrow let loose on them.

V.--Their means of action.

Dispersion of the Feuillants' club.--Pressure of the tribunes on the Assembly.--Street mobs.

Thus, for the second time, the pretended freedom fighters seek power by boldly employing force.--They begin by suppressing the meetings of the Feuillants club. The customary riot is instigated against these, whereupon ensue tumult, violent outcries and scuffles; mayor Pétion complains of his position "between opinion and law," and lets things take their course; finally, the Feuillants are obliged to evacuate their place of meeting.--Inside the Assembly they are abandoned to the insolence of the galleries. In vain do they get exasperated and protest. Ducastel, referring to the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which forbids any manifestation of approbation or disapprobation, is greeted with murmurs. He insists on the decree being read at the opening of each session, and "the murmurs begin again." "Is it not scandalous," says Vaublanc, "that the nation's representatives speaking from the tribune are subject to hootings like those bestowed upon an actor on the stage!" whereupon the galleries give him three rounds more. "Will posterity believe," says Quatremère, "that acts concerning the honor, the lives, and the fortunes of citizens should be subject, like games in the arena, to the applause and hisses of the spectators!" "Come to the point!" shout the galleries. "If ever," resumes Quatremère, "the most important of judicial acts (an act of capital indictment) can be exposed to this scandalous prostitution of applause and menaces..." "The murmurs break out afresh."--Every time that a sanguinary or incendiary measure is to be carried, the most furious and prolonged clamor stops the utterance of its opponents: "Down with the speaker! Send the reporter of that bill to prison! Down! Down! Sometimes only about twenty of the deputies will applaud or hoot with the galleries, and sometimes it is the entire Assembly which is insulted. Fists are thrust in the president's face. All that now remains is "to call down the galleries on the floor to pass decrees," which proposition is ironically made by one of the "Right."

Great, however, as this usurpation may be, the minority, in order to suppress the majority, accommodate themselves to it, the Jacobins in the chamber making common cause with the Jacobins in the galleries. The disturbers should not be put out; "it would be excluding from our deliberations," says Grangeneuve, "that which belongs essentially to the people." On one of the deputies demanding measures to enforce silence, "Torné demands that the proposition be referred to the Portugal inquisition." Choudieu "declares that it can only emanate from deputies who forget that respect which is due to the people, their sovereign judge." "The action of the galleries," says Lecointe-Puyraiveaux, "is an outburst of patriotism." Finally, this same Choudieu, twisting and turning all rights about with incomparable audacity, wishes to confer legislative privileges on the audience, and demands a decree against the deputies who, guilty of popular lèse-majesté, presume to complain of those who insult them.--Another piece of oppressive machinery, still more energetic, operates outside on the approaches to the Assembly. Like their predecessors of the Constituent Assembly, the members of the "Right" "cannot leave the building without encountering the threats and imprecations of enraged crowds. Cries of 'to the lantern!' greet the ears of Dumolard, Vaublanc, Raucourd, and Lacretelle as often as those of the Abbé Maury and Montlosier." After having hurled abuse at the president, Mathieu Dumas, they insult his wife who has been recognized in a reserved gallery. In the Tuileries, crowds are always standing there listening to the brawlers who denounce suspected deputies by name, and woe to any among them who takes that path on his way to the chamber! A broadside of insults greets him as he passes along. If the deputy happens to be a farmer, they exclaim: "Look at that queer old aristocrat--an old peasant dog that used to watch cows!" One day Hua, on going up the steps of the Tuileries terrace, is seized by the hair by an old vixen who bids him "Bow your head to your sovereigns, the people, you bastard of a deputy!" On the 20th of June one of the patriots, who is crossing the Assembly room, whispers in his ear, "You scamp of a deputy, you'll never die but by my hand!" Another time, having defended the juge-de-paix Larivière, there awaits him at the door, in the middle of the night, "a set of blackguards, who crowd around him and thrust their fists and cudgels in his face;" happily, his friends Dumas and Daverhoult, two military officers, foreseeing the danger, present their pistols and set him free "although with some difficulty."--As the 10th of August draws near there is more open aggression. Vaublanc, for having defended Lafayette, just misses being cut to pieces three times on leaving the Assembly; sixty of the deputies are treated in the same fashion, being struck, covered with mud, and threatened with death if they dare go back.--With such allies a minority is very strong. Thanks to its two agencies of constraint it will detach the votes it needs from the majority and, either through terror or craft, secure the passage of all the decrees it needs.

VI.--Parliamentary maneuvers.

Abuses of urgency.--Vote on the principle.--Call by name. --Intimidation of the "Center."--Opponents inactive.--The majority finally disposed of.

Sometimes it succeeds surreptitiously by rushing them through. As "there is no order of the day circulated beforehand, and, in any event, none which anybody is obliged to adhere to," the Assembly is captured by surprise. "The first knave amongst the 'Left,' (which expression, says Hua, I do not strike out, because there were many among those gentlemen), brought up a ready-made resolution, prepared the evening before by a clique. We were not prepared for it and demanded that it should be referred to a committee. Instead of doing this, however, the resolution was declared urgent, and, whether we would or not, discussion had to take place forthwith."--"There were other tactics equally perfidious, which Thuriot, especially, made use of. This great rascal got up and proposed, not the draft of a law, but what he called a principle; for instance, a decree should be passed confiscating the property of the émigrés,.. or that unsworn priests should be subject to special surveillance.... In reply, he was told that his principle was the core of a law, the very law itself; so let it be debated by referring it to a committee to make a report on it.--Not at all--the matter is urgent; a committee might fix the articles as it pleases; they are worthless if the principle is not common sense." Through this expeditious method discussion is stifled. The Jacobins purposely prevent the Assembly from giving the matter any consideration. They count on its bewilderment. In the name of reason, they discard reason as far as they can, and hasten a vote because their decrees do not stand up to analysis.--At other times, and especially on grand occasions, they compel a vote. In general, votes are given by the members either sitting down or standing up, and, for the four hundred deputies of the "Center," subject to the scolding of the exasperated galleries, it is a tolerably hard trial. "Part of them do not arise, or they rise with the 'Left'." If the "Right" happens to have a majority, "this is contested in bad faith and a call of the house is demanded." Now, "the calls of the house, through an intolerable abuse, are always published; the Jacobins declaring that it is well for the people to know their friends from their enemies." The meaning of this is that this list of the opposition will soon serve as a list of the outlaws, on which the timid are not disposed to inscribe themselves. The result is an immediate defection in the heavy battalions of the "Centre"; "this is a positive fact," says Hua, "of which we were all witnesses; we always lost a hundred votes on the call of the house."--Towards the end they give up, and protest no more, except by staying away: on the 14th of June, when the abolishment of the whole system of feudal credit was being dealt with, only the extreme left was attending; the rest of the "Assembly hall was nearly empty"; out of 497 deputies in attendance, 200 had left the session. Encouraged for a moment by the appearance of some possible protection, they twice exonerate General Lafayette, behind whom they see an army, and brave the despots of the Assembly, the clubs, and the streets. But, for lack of a military chief and base, the visible majority is twice obliged to yield, to keep silent, and fly or retreat under the dictatorship of the victorious faction, which has strained and forced the legislative machine until it has become disjointed and broken down.

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