"Let us not forget that at that period the whole Assembly was Royalist, without excepting a single member."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 108.
[117] For a full detail of this project see Œuvres de Necker, vol. vi., p. 119. Necker is condemned by Michelet with merciless severity for presenting a project which, though it secured a few reforms, still allowed the despotic court such sway. But if the minister could not carry even this project, what could he have done with one making still greater demands? The British government, with its king and its houses of lords and commons, was Necker's model; though he still allowed the court powers which would not be tolerated by the people of Great Britain for an hour. But the French court looked with contempt upon the limited powers of the king and the nobles of England, and would consent to no approximation to the government which prevailed there. The Tiers Etat would have been more than satisfied with the English Constitution. No one then desired the overthrow of the monarchy.
[118] Smyth, Lectures on French Revolution, i., 192; Michelet, i., 110.
[119] Michelet, i., 110.
[120] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 53, says that the clergy voted for union one hundred and forty-nine voices against one hundred and twenty-six.
[121] "The nobility that I converse with," writes Arthur Young, "are most disgustingly tenacious of all old rights, however hard they may bear upon the people. They will not hear of giving way in the least to the spirit of liberty beyond the point of paying equal land-taxes, which they hold to be all that can with reason be demanded."
"It was only very late," writes Wm. Smyth, "and when too late, that they reached even this point."
[122] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, i., 56.
[123] Id., 57; Michelet, i., 112.
[124] Hist. Parl., vol. ii., p. 15.