History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814. M. Mignet
its armed force, the mayoralty its popular power. Mirabeau, Lafayette, Bailly, relied on this class; one was its tribune, the other its general, and the third its magistrate. Duport, Barnave, and Lameth's party were of the principles and sustained the interests of that period of the revolution; but this party, composed of young men of ardent patriotism, who entered on public affairs with superior qualities, fine talents, and elevated positions, and who joined to the love of liberty the ambition of playing a leading part, placed itself from the first rather in advance of the revolution of July the 14th. Its fulcrum within the assembly was the members of the extreme left without, in the clubs, in the nation, in the party of the people, who had co-operated on the 14th of July, and who were unwilling that the bourgeoisie alone should derive advantage from the victory. By putting itself at the head of those who had no leaders, and who being a little out of the government aspired to enter it, it did not cease to belong to this first period of the revolution; only it formed a kind of democratic opposition, even in the middle class itself, only differing from its leaders on a few unimportant points, and voting with them on most questions. It was, among these popular men, rather a patriotic emulation than a party dissension.
Duport, who was strong-minded, and who had acquired premature experience of the management of political passions, in the struggles which parliament had sustained against the ministry, and which he had chiefly directed, knew well that a people reposes the moment it has gained its rights, and that it begins to grow weak as soon as it reposes. To keep in vigour those who governed in the assembly, in the mayoralty, in the militia; to prevent public activity from slackening, and not to disband the people, whose aid he might one day require, he conceived and executed the famous confederation of the clubs. This institution, like everything that gives a great impulse to a nation, caused a great deal of good, and a great deal of harm. It impeded legal authority, when this of itself was sufficient; but it also gave an immense energy to the revolution, when, attacked on all sides, it could only save itself by the most violent efforts. For the rest, the founders of this association had not calculated all its consequences. They regarded it simply as a wheel destined to keep or put in movement the public machine, without danger, when it tended to abate or to cease its activity; they did not think they were working for the advantage of the multitude. After the flight of Varennes, this party had become too exacting and too formidable; they forsook it, and supported themselves against it with the mass of the assembly and the middle class, whose direction was left vacant by the death of Mirabeau. At this period, it was important to them speedily to fix the constitutional revolution; for to protract it would have been to bring on the republican revolution.
The mass of the assembly, we have just mentioned, abounded in just, experienced, and even superior minds. Its leaders were two men, strangers to the third estate, and adopted by it. Without the abbé Sieyès, the constituent assembly would probably have had less unity in its operation, and without Mirabeau, less energy in its conduct.
Sieyès was one of those men who create sects in an age of enthusiasm, and who exercise the ascendancy of a powerful reason in an enlightened era. Solitude and philosophical studies had matured him at an early age. His views were new, strong, and extensive, but somewhat too systematic. Society had especially been the subject of his examination; he had watched its progress, investigated its springs. The nature of government appeared to him less a question of right than a question of epoch. His vast intellect ranged the society of our days in its divisions, relations, powers, and movement. Sieyès, though of cold temperament, had the ardour which the pursuit of truth inspires, and the passion which its discovery gives; he was accordingly absolute in his views, disdaining those of others, because he considered them incomplete, and because, in his opinion, half truth was error. Contradiction irritated him; he was not communicative. Desirous of making himself thoroughly known, he could not do so with every one. His disciples imparted his systems to others, which surrounded him with a sort of mystery, and rendered him the object of a species of reverence. He had the authority which complete political science procures, and the constitution might have emerged from his head completely armed, like the Minerva of Jupiter, or the legislation of the ancients, were it not that in our days every one sought to be engaged in the task, or to criticise it. Yet, with the exception of some modifications, his plans were generally adopted, and he had in the committees more disciples than colleagues.
Mirabeau obtained in the tribune the same ascendancy as Sieyès in the committees. He was a man who only waited the occasion to become great. At Rome, in the best days of the republic, he would have been a Gracchus; in its decline, a Catiline; under the Fronde, a cardinal de Retz; and in the decrepitude of a monarchy, when such a being could only find scope for his immense faculties in agitation, he became remarkable for the vehemence of his passions, and for their punishment, a life passed in committing excesses, and suffering for them. This prodigious activity required employment; the revolution provided it. Accustomed to the struggle against despotism, irritated by the contempt of a nobility who were inferior to him, and who excluded him from their body; clever, daring, eloquent, Mirabeau felt that the revolution would be his work, and his life. He exactly corresponded to the chief wants of his time. His thought, his voice, his action, were those of a tribune. In perilous circumstances, his was the earnestness which carries away an assembly; in difficult discussions, the unanswerable sally which at once puts an end to them; with a word he prostrated ambition, silenced enmities, disconcerted rivalries. This powerful being, perfectly at his ease in the midst of agitation, now giving himself up to the impetuosity, now to the familiarities of conscious strength, exercised a sort of sovereignty in the assembly. He soon obtained immense popularity, which he retained to the last; and he whom, at his first entrance into the legislature, every eye shunned, was, at his death, received into the Pantheon, amidst the tears of the assembly; and of all France. Had it not been for the revolution, Mirabeau would have failed in realizing his destiny, for it is not enough to be great: one must live at the fitting period.
The duke of Orleans, to whom a party has been given, had but little influence in the assembly; he voted with the majority, not the majority with him. The personal attachment of some of its members, his name, the fears of the court, the popularity his opinions enjoyed, hopes rather than conspiracies had increased his reputation as a factious character. He had neither the qualities nor the defects of a conspirator; he may have aided with his money and his name popular movements, which would have taken place just the same without him, and which had another object than his elevation. It is still a common error to attribute the greatest of revolutions to some petty private manoeuvring, as if at such an epoch a whole people could be used as the instrument of one man.
The assembly had acquired the entire power; the corporations depended on it; the national guards obeyed it. It was divided into committees to facilitate its operations, and execute them. The royal power, though existing of right, was in a measure suspended, since it was not obeyed, and the assembly had to supply its action by its own. Thus, independently of committees entrusted with the preparation of its measures, it had appointed others to exercise a useful superintendence without. A committee of supply occupied itself with provisions, an important object in a year of scarcity; a committee of inquiry corresponded with the corporations and provinces; a committee of researches received informations against the conspirators of the 14th of July. But finance and the constitution, which the past crises had adjourned, were the special subjects of attention.
After having momentarily provided for the necessities of the treasury, the assembly, although now become sovereign, consulted, by examining the cahiers, the wishes of its constituents. It then proceeded to form its institutions with a method, a liberal and extensive spirit of discussion, which was to procure for France a constitution conformable with justice and suited to its necessities. The United States of America, at the time of its independence, had set forth in a declaration the rights of man, and those of the citizen. This will ever be the first step. A people rising from slavery feels the necessity of proclaiming its rights, even before it forms its government. Those Frenchmen who had assisted at the American revolution, and who co-operated in ours, proposed a similar declaration as a preamble to our laws. This was agreeable to an assembly of legislators and philosophers, restricted by no limits, since no institutions existed, and directed by primitive and fundamental ideas of society, since it was the pupil of the eighteenth century. Though this declaration only contained general principles, and confined itself to setting forth in maxims what the constitution was to put into laws, it was calculated