The coalition which he denounced to the people was true. Barnave had an understanding with the court. Malouet, an eloquent and able member of the right, had an understanding with Barnave: a plan for modifying the constitution had been concerted between these two men—yesterday foes, to-day allies. The moment was come for uniting in one general measure all these scattered laws valid during a revolution of thirty months. In separating, on this review of the acts of the Assembly, what was integral from that which was not, the occasion must arise for a revision of every act of the constitution. It was, therefore, the moment to profit (in order to amend them in a sense more monarchical), by the reaction produced by La Fayette's victory. What impulse and anger had too violently taken from the prerogatives of the crown, reason and reflection could restore to it. The same men who had placed the executive power in the hands of the Assembly, hoped to be able to withdraw it from them. They believed they could effect every thing by their eloquence and popularity. Like all who are descending the tide of a revolution, they thought they were able to ascend the stream with equal ease. They did not see that their strength, of which they were so proud, was not in themselves, but in the current which bore them along. Events were about to teach them that there is no opposing passions to which concession has been once made. The strength of a statesman is his power. One concession, how slight soever, to factions, is an irrevocable engagement with them: when once we consent to become their instrument, we may be made their idol and their victim, never their master. Barnave was doomed to learn this when too late; and the Girondists were to learn it after him. The plan was thus arranged:—Malouet was to ascend the tribune, and in a vehement but well-reasoned discourse was to attack all the errors of the constitution; he was to demonstrate that if these vices were not amended by the Assembly before the constitution itself should be presented to the king and the people to swear to, it would be anarchy registered by an oath. The three hundred members of the côté droit were to support the charges of their spokesman by vehement plaudits. Barnave was then to demand a reply, and in a discourse, apparently much excited, was to have vindicated the constitution from the invectives of Malouet, at the same time conceding that as this constitution was suddenly produced by the enthusiastic ardour of the Revolution, and under the impulse of desperately contending circumstances, there might be some imperfections in a certain portion of the construction; that the grave consideration and wisdom of the Assembly might remedy these errors before it dissolved; and that, amongst other ameliorations which might be applied to this work, they might retouch two or three articles in which the power assigned to the executive authority and the legislative authority had been ill defined, so as to restore to the executive power the independence and scope indispensable to their existence. The friends of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport, as well as all the members of the left, would have clamorously supported the speaker, except Robespierre, Pétion, Buzot, and the republicans. A commission would have been instantly named for the special revision of the articles alluded to. This commission would have made its report before the end of the meeting of the chambers; and the three hundred votes of Malouet, united to the constitutional votes of Barnave, would have assured to the monarchical amendments the majority which was to restore royalty.
XIX.
But the members of the right refused to give their unanimous concurrence to this plan. "To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt. To unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves. To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king even to gratitude towards a member of a faction. Their hopes had not fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a character in a comedy of startled revolutionists. Their hopes were not in any amelioration of present ill, but in its progress towards worse. The very excess of disorder would punish disorder itself. The king was at the Tuileries, but royalty was not there—it was at Coblentz, it was on all the thrones of Europe. Monarchies were all in connection; they knew very well how to restore the French monarchy without the fellowship of those who had overturned it."
Thus reasoned the members of the right. Feelings and resentments closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand of its friends than that of its enemies. The plan was abortive.
Whilst the captive king kept up a twofold understanding with his emigrant brothers to learn the strength and inclination of foreign powers, and with Barnave to attempt the conquest of the Assembly, the Assembly itself lost its power; and the spirit of the Revolution, quitting the place in which it had no longer any hopes, went to excite the clubs and municipalities, and bestow its energies on the elections. The Assembly had committed the fault of declaring its members not re-eligible for the new legislature. This act of renunciation of itself, which resembled the heroism of disinterestedness, was in reality the sacrifice of the country; it was the ostracism of superior power, and an assurance of triumph to mediocrity. A nation how rich soever in genius and virtue, never possesses more than a definite number of great citizens. Nature is chary of superiority. The social conditions necessary to form a public man are rarely in combination. Intelligence, clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance. The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues. The republican party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists. The constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which they expected their successors would present. It was a vote of contending passions, all evil, and which could only produce a loss to all parties. The king alone was averse from this measure. He perceived repentance in the National Assembly—he was in communication with its leading members—he had the key to many consciences. A new nation, unknown and impatient, was about to present it before him in a new Assembly. The reports of the press, the clubs, and places of popular bruit told him, but too plainly, on what men the excited people would bestow their confidence. He preferred known, exhausted, opponents, men partly gained over, to new and ardent enemies who would surpass in exactions those they replaced. To them there only remained his throne to overthrow,—to him there was left to yield but his life.
XX.
The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton;—in the departments, those of Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet,—who were afterwards Girondists; and those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who, subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or his victims. Condorcet was a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid. Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth: his science was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph necessarily over all the resistance of matter; must lay bare all the creative powers of nature, and renew the face of creation. He had made of this system a line of politics, whose first idea was to adore the future and abhor the past. He had the cool fanaticism of logic, and the reflective anger of conviction. A pupil of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Helvetius, he, like Bailly, was of that intermediate generation by which philosophy was embodied with the Revolution. More ambitious than Bailly, he had not his impassibility. Aristocrat by birth, he, like Mirabeau, had passed over to the camp of the people. Hated by the court, he hated it as do all renegades. He had become one of the people, in order to convert the people into the army of philosophy. He wanted of the republic no more than was sufficient to overturn its prejudices. Ideas once become victorious,—he would willingly have confided it to the control of a constitutional monarchy. He was rather a man for dispute than a man of anarchy. Aristocrats always carry with them, into the popular party, the desire of order and command. They would fain
"Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."
Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and feel themselves impotent to command. Condorcet had edited the Chronique de Paris from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte Chapelle, elected Condorcet to the chamber. The same club returned Danton.