On Monday, August 30th, there was a report at the Palais Royal that Mirabeau was in danger of arrest. St. Huruge immediately headed a band of fifteen hundred men, and set out for Versailles for his protection. It was a mob threatening violence, and La Fayette, at the head of a detachment of the National Guard, stopped them and drove them back. Murmurs now began to arise against La Fayette and the National Guard. Rumors were set in circulation that La Fayette was in league with the aristocrats. Excitement was again rapidly increasing, as the people feared that, after all, they were to be betrayed and again enslaved.
LA FAYETTE REVIEWING THE NATIONAL GUARD.
The agitated assembly at the Palais Royal sent a deputation to Versailles to Mounier, one of the most influential and truly patriotic of the deputies, announcing to him that twenty thousand men were ready to march to Versailles to drive the aristocrats out of the Assembly. At the same time an address was received by the president from the citizens of Rennes, declaring that those who should vote for the absolute veto were traitors to their country. Under these circumstances, the king sent a message to the National Assembly, stating that he should be satisfied with a limited, or, as it was then called, a suspensive veto. In taking the question the absolute veto was rejected, and the suspensive veto adopted by a vote of 673 to 355. By this measure the veto of the king would suspend the action of any legislative enactment during two subsequent sessions of the Legislature. If, after this, the Legislature still persisted, the king's veto was overruled and the act went into effect. This was giving the king much greater power than the President of the United States possesses. A two-thirds vote of both houses can immediately carry any measure against the veto of the President. Freedom of opinion, of worship, and of the press were also decreed.
These questions being thus settled, it was now voted that the measures thus far adopted were constitutional, not legislative; and that, consequently, they were to be presented to the king, not for his sanction, but for promulgation. It was also voted by acclaim that the crown should be hereditary and the person of the king inviolable, the ministers alone being responsible for the measures of government. To republican eyes these seem like mild measures of reform, though they have been most severely condemned by the majority of writers upon the French Revolution in monarchical Europe. If the nobles had yielded to these reasonable reforms, the horrors which ensued might have been avoided. If combined Europe had not risen in arms against the Revolution, the regeneration of France might, perhaps, have been peacefully achieved.[216]
In every nation there are thousands of the ignorant, degraded, miserable, who have nothing to lose and something to hope from anarchy. The inmates of the dens of crime and infamy, who are only held in check by the strong restraints of law, rejoice in the opportunity to sack the dwellings of the industrious and the wealthy, and to pour the tide of ruin through the homes of the virtuous and the happy. This class of abandoned men and women was appallingly increasing. They flocked to the city from all parts of the kingdom, and Paris was crowded with spectres, emaciate and ragged, whose hideous and haggard features spoke only of vice and misery. Sièyes expressed to Mirabeau his alarm in view of the portentous aspect of affairs.
"You have let the bull loose," Mirabeau replied, "and now you complain that he butts with his horns."[217]
Much has been said respecting the motives which influenced Mirabeau.