Had they refused, they would have been compelled; for, to obtain the power, the Assembly has, from the very first, either tolerated or solicited the violence of the streets. But, in accepting insurrectionists for its allies, it makes them masters, and henceforth, in Paris as in the provinces, illegal and brutal force becomes the principal power of the State. "The triumph was accomplished through the people; it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring—after the murder of the baker François, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at Nancy, and the outbreak of the Champ de Mars—feel that they themselves are menaced, vote for and apply martial law, and repel force with force. But, in general, when the despotism of the people is exercised only against the royalist minority, they allow their adversaries to be oppressed, and do not consider themselves affected by the violence which assails the party of the "right:" they are enemies, and may be given up to the wild beasts. In accordance with this, the "left" has made its arrangements; its fanaticism has no scruples; it is principle, it is absolute truth that is at stake; this must triumph at any cost. Besides, can there be any hesitation in having recourse to the people in the people's own cause? A little compulsion will help along the good cause, and hence the siege of the Assembly is continually renewed. This was the practice already at Versailles before the 6th of October, while now, at Paris, it is kept up more actively and with less disguise.
At the beginning of the year 1790,[2136] the band under pay comprises seven hundred and fifty effective men, most of them deserters or soldiers drummed out of their regiments, who are at first paid five francs and then forty sous a day. It is their business to make or support motions in the coffee-houses and in the streets, to mix with the spectators at the sittings of the sections, with the groups at the Palais-Royal, and especially in the galleries of the National-Assembly, where they are to hoot or applaud at a given signal. Their leader is a Chevalier de Saint-Louis, to whom they swear obedience, and who receives his orders from the Committee of Jacobins. His first lieutenant at the Assembly is a M. Saule, "a stout, small, stunted old fellow, formerly an upholsterer, then a charlatan hawker of four penny boxes of grease (made from the fat of those that had been hung—for the cure of diseases of the kidneys) and all his life a sot.... who, by means of a tolerably shrill voice, which was always well moistened, has acquired some reputation in the galleries of the Assembly." In fact, he has forged admission tickets he has been turned out; he has been obliged to resume "the box of ointment, and travel for one or two months in the provinces with a man of letters for his companion." But on his return, "through the protection of a groom of the Court, he obtained a piece of ground for a coffee-house against the wall of the Tuileries garden, almost alongside of the National Assembly," and now it is at home in his coffee-shop behind his counter that the hirelings of the galleries "come to him to know what they must say, and to be told the order of the day in regard to applause." Besides this, he is there himself; "it is he who for three years is to regulate public sentiment in the galleries confided to his care, and, for his useful and satisfactory services, the Constituent Assembly will award him a recompense," to which the Legislative Assembly will add "a pension of six hundred livres, besides a lodging in an apartment of the Feuillants."
We can divine how men of this stamp, thus compensated, do their work. From the top of the galleries[2137] they drown the demands of the "right" by the force of their lungs; this or that decree, as, for instance, the abolition of titles of nobility, is carried, "not by shouts, but by terrific howls."[2138] On the arrival of the news of the sacking of the Hôtel de Castries by the populace, they applaud. On the question coming up as to the decision whether the Catholic faith shall be dominant, "they shout out that the aristocrats must all be hung, and then things will go on well." Their outrages not only remain unpunished, but are encouraged: this or that noble who complains of their hooting is called to order, while their interference and vociferations, their insults and their menaces, are from this time introduced as one of the regular wheels of legislative operations. Their pressure is still worse outside the Chamber.[2139] The Assembly is obliged several times to double its guard. On the 27th of September, 1790, there are 40,000 men around the building to extort the dismissal of the Ministers, and "motions for assassination" are made under the windows, On the 4th of January, 1791, whilst on a call of the house the ecclesiastical deputies pass in turn to the tribune, to take or refuse the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, a furious clamor ascends in the Tuileries, and even penetrates into the Chamber. "To the lamp post with all those who refuse!" On the 27th of September, 1790, M. Dupont, economist, having spoken against the assignats, is surrounded on leaving the Chamber and hooted at, hustled, pushed against the basin of the Tuileries, into which he was being thrown when the guard rescued him. On the 21st of June, 1790, M. de Cazalès just misses "being torn to pieces by the people."[2140] Deputies 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 parliamentarians[2143] 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 against the nation."[2148] What could be more vague than such a term? What could be more mischievous than such an institution?—Renewed every month, deprived of special agents, composed of credulous and inexperienced deputies, this committee, set to perform the work of a Lenoir or a Fouché, makes up for its incapacity by violence, and its proceedings anticipate those of the Jacobine inquisition.[2149] Alarmist and suspicious, it encourages accusations, and, for lack of plots to discover, it invents them. Inclinations, in its eyes, stand for actions, and floating projects become accomplished outrages. On the denunciation of a domestic who has listened at a door, on the gossip of a washerwoman who has found a scrap of paper in a dressing-gown, on the false interpretation of a letter, on vague indications which it completes and patches together by the strength of its imagination, it forges a coup d'état, makes examinations, domiciliary visits, nocturnal surprises and arrests;[2150] it exaggerates, blackens, and comes in public session to denounce the whole affair to the National Assembly. First comes the plot of the Breton nobles to deliver Brest to the English;[2151] then the plot for hiring brigands to destroy the crops; then the plot of 14th of July to burn Paris; then the plot of Favras to murder Lafayette, Necker, and Bailly; then the plot of Augeard to carry off the King, and many others, week after week, not counting those which swarm in the brains of the journalists, and which Desmoulins, Fréron, and Marat reveal with a flourish of trumpets in each of their publications.