The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte
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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 Abbé 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 Français 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 parliamentarians2143 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 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