The Assembly then abolished the oppressive duty upon salt.[246] The old parliaments of the old provinces, as corrupt bodies as have perhaps ever existed, and the subservient instruments of aristocratic oppression, were suppressed, and new courts of a popular character substituted in their place. All trials were ordered to be public; no punishment, on accusation for crime, could be inflicted unless by a vote of two thirds of the court. The penalty of death required a vote of four fifths. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was blotted out, and thus some thousands of Protestants who had long been banished from France were permitted to return and to enjoy all their political rights. It was decreed that all citizens, of whatever condition, should be subject to the same laws and judged by the same tribunals. Those accused of crime were to be tried by jury, but not till a court had previously determined that the evidence against them was sufficiently strong to warrant their arrest. It is remarkable that both Robespierre and Marat were most earnest in their endeavors to abrogate the death-penalty. During this discussion Dr. Guillotin urged the adoption, in capital punishment, of a new machine which he had invented.
"With my machine," said the doctor, "I can clip off your head in the twinkling of an eye without your feeling it."
These words, most earnestly uttered, caused a general burst of laughter in the Assembly. But a few months passed ere many of those deputies were bound to the plank and experienced the efficiency of the keen blade. The introduction of the guillotine was intended as a measure of humanity. The unfortunate man doomed to death was thus to be saved from needless suffering.[247]
The measures adopted by the Constituent Assembly seem to republican eyes just and moderate. Experience, it is true, has proved that it is safer to have two houses of legislation, a senate and a lower house, than one, but the subsequent decrees passed by this one house were manifestly dictated, not by passion, but by patriotism and a sense of right.[248]
The clergy now made immense efforts to rouse the peasantry all over the kingdom to oppose the Revolution. Religious fanaticism exhausted all its energies. The parliaments also of the old provinces, composed exclusively of the nobles, roused themselves anew and were vehement in remonstrances and protests. They became active agents in organizing opposition, in maligning the action of the Assembly, and in inciting the credulous multitude to violence. The Assembly punished the parliaments by abolishing them all.
The court bitterly accused the Assembly of a usurpation of power, which called from Mirabeau a reply which electrified France.
"You ask," he said, "how, from being deputies, we have made ourselves a convention. I will tell you. The day when, finding our assembly-room shut, bristling and defiled with bayonets, we hastened to the first place that could contain us, and swore that we would perish rather than abandon the interests of the people—on that day, if we were not a convention, we became one. Let them now go and hunt out of the useless nomenclature of civilians the definition of the words National Convention! Gentlemen, you all know the conduct of that Roman who, to save his country from a great conspiracy, had been obliged to outstep the powers conferred upon him by the laws. A captious tribune required from him the oath that he had respected them. He thought, by that insidious proposal, to leave the consul no alternative but perjury or an embarrassing avowal. 'I swear,' said that great man, 'that I have saved the republic.' Gentlemen, we also swear that we have saved the commonwealth."
This sublime apostrophe brought the whole Assembly to its feet. The charge of usurpation was not repeated.
A great effort was at the same time made to compel the Assembly to adopt the resolution that the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is, and shall ever be, the religion of the nation, and that its worship is the only one authorized." As one of the court party was urging this resolve, and quoting, as a precedent, some intolerant decree of Louis XIV., Mirabeau sent dismay to the heart of the court by exclaiming,
"And how should not every kind of intolerance have been consecrated in a reign signalized by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes?"