Meantime the causes which led to disturbance were steadily increasing rather than diminishing. The emigration of the aristocrats had begun. Paris, always a city of luxury, and depending largely on the sale of luxuries for her support, found herself deserted by the Court, the rich, the travelling public, by the great spending class to whose expensive wants she ministered, and whom the disorders of July had driven away. Thousands of journeymen tailors, shoemakers and hair-dressers, thrown out of work, thousands of domestic servants, thrown out of places, thousands of makers of lace and fans, of carriages and upholstery, of jewellery and nick-nacks, thrown out of employment by the cessation of their trades, began to gather and demonstrate in different quarters of the city. Beggars from the country and deserters from the army continued to pour in, to fraternise with the people, to join in the exciting politics of the Palais Royal, to add to the pressure upon the food supply. In vain the new municipal authorities opened relief works at Montmartre, and sold grain to the bakers at a heavy loss. The discontent became more general and threatening. The oratory of the Palais Royal, which followed with intense keenness the debates of the Assembly, and which was almost ready to take arms on behalf of the suspensive veto, increased in vehemence. The suspiciousness and distrust of the Court—suggested, it may be, by emissaries of the Duke of Orleans—which had so largely contributed to the outbreak in July, revived in full force as September went by. The Parisians knew or suspected that one party at Court was constantly urging the King to retire further from Paris. They believed that their troubles would never end until they had the King and the Assembly in their midst. And when, at the end of September, the Government, acting probably in the interests of order, brought up the Flanders regiment to Versailles, and the courtiers made the arrival of the troops the occasion for a great royalist demonstration, the excitement in the capital broke bounds again, and the extraordinary march of the women to Versailles effected the capture of the King.
The events of the 5th and 6th October need no description. Their origin is a mystery still. But their result was most important. The royal family and the National Assembly were removed to Paris, and were thenceforward kept in Paris, as hostages in the hands of the strongest party. The fortunes of Paris became decisive of the fortunes of the Revolution in France. But the democratic forces, which had won the day, did not reap the fruits of the victory. The advantage of the movement fell entirely to the party which represented the views and formed the following of Lafayette, the party of middle class reformers, who, by securing the person of the King, finally baffled the forces of reaction, and obtained the control of the Revolution themselves. It was this party which had organised the National Guard. Now that it was triumphant, it honestly wished to consolidate, in its own fashion, liberty and order. But, unfortunately, the charge is with some justice made against it, that, consciously or unconsciously, it did not care for the interests of the class below it, by whose assistance it had achieved its triumph, and by whom it was destined in its turn to be overthrown. The leader of this party was Lafayette; and the more the records of those two days are examined, the more difficult is it to resist the conclusion that Lafayette's action all through them was calculated to promote his own advantage, and that his intention was to use the forces of revolution just enough to frighten the King into submission, then to appear upon the scene as his deliverer, and to turn the King's submission to account. In that intention Lafayette succeeded, and the events of the 5th and 6th October made his views and his authority for a time the dominant influence in the State.
The Labours of the Constituent Assembly.
After its arrival in Paris, the Assembly continued, amid many interruptions, the work of constructing the new constitution, and the same blind attachment to captivating theories, which had wasted so many weeks in barren discussion at Versailles, pervaded its debates and its decrees in Paris. The great bulk of the members of the Assembly were determined to carry into practice the idea of the sovereignty of the people, and to observe, as far as logic could, the natural rights of man. If facts or experience conflicted with these theories, facts and experience must go to the wall. The circumstances, needs or traditions of nations seemed to them to be of little importance in comparison with the eternal principles which philosophy had laid down for the government of the world. In pursuance of these views, the slaves in the French colony of St. Domingo were immediately emancipated, without regard to the difficulties involved in so summary a proceeding, or the disaster certain to ensue. 'Let the colonies perish,' cried a member of the Assembly, 'rather than sacrifice a principle.' In pursuance also of these views, all titles of nobility were abolished, as being 'repugnant to reason and to true liberty.' It became an offence and subsequently a crime for a nobleman to sign his name in the old style. The Assembly taught the people to regard rank as something wrong; and the people, taking up the idea, and colouring it with their own fears and ancient hatreds, soon came to look on all possessors of rank as evil-doers, who had no right to fair treatment or protection from the law, and for whom the proper destiny was the guillotine. On the same vague theories the constitution was built up. The desire to place sovereignty in the hands of the people led the Assembly to impose many complicated political duties upon the great mass of citizens, who had never as yet exercised any political functions at all. At the same time they curtailed as far as possible, and hampered by a system of elaborate checks, the power which they left to those at the head of affairs, who had long been accustomed to political duties, and who had certainly fulfilled them very ill. The result was a complete paralysis in the Government, and a constitution foredoomed to fail.
The best hope for the Revolution lay in the speedy establishment of a strong Government, composed of men thoroughly in harmony with the majority in the Assembly, possessed of power sufficient to ensure order, and of popularity sufficient to command support. The establishment of such a Government was from the first Mirabeau's object; but the Assembly soon proceeded to render it impossible. The great majority of deputies, who had accepted the proposition that all power ought to proceed from the people, regarded it as the corollary of that proposition, that executive government, which nominally proceeded from the King, was opposed to the people's interests, and that all executive agents were inimical to freedom. To their minds, naturally enough, executive power was associated with the old monarchy and the Court, and the old monarchy and the Court they justly regarded as antagonistic to the principles of liberty. The proper remedy was to render the Executive thoroughly dependent on the popular will, and to unite it with the Assembly so closely that the policy and interests of both must be the same. Instead of that, the Assembly set a barrier between itself and the Executive, which rendered cordial co-operation impossible, and early in November, 1789, it passed a most unfortunate decree, rendering all members of the House ineligible for places in the Government.
It may or it may not be fair to attribute the decree of the 7th November to the influence of Necker and Lafayette, and to their jealous fear of Mirabeau's ambition. But of all the measures of the Assembly, there was probably none which was more disastrous in its effects upon the Revolution. Only a strong Government could have coped with the rising anarchy in France; but from that day forward a strong Government became impossible, until the legislature, to escape from the difficulty which it had created, invested its own committees with dictatorial powers. From that day forward, the breach between the Assembly and the Crown inevitably widened. The members of the Assembly lost all chance of learning from the responsibilities of office the experience and stability which they so much required. Their jealousy and distrust of the Executive deepened. As they did not choose or trust the Ministers, they determined narrowly to circumscribe their powers, and limited and embarrassed them at every turn. The King, the head of this dangerous Executive, was as far as possible stripped of power. He was not allowed to veto—except for a limited time—the measures of the Assembly. He was not allowed to convoke, to adjourn or to dissolve it. It was only after a determined struggle, and owing to the extraordinary influence of Mirabeau, that the King and his Ministers were permitted to retain the initiative upon questions of war and peace. They were deprived of almost all authority over their own agents in the Government and the law. They had no power to appoint, to control, to reward, or to punish the official subordinates who nominally carried out their commands. The Assembly held them responsible for the safety of the country. It watched them with jealous carefulness. It threatened them with overwhelming penalties if they transgressed. It deliberately refused to be associated with them, or to share their responsibilities in any way. It treated them from the first as suspected persons, and reduced them to mere figure-heads, at which to point the calumnies which its own fears composed. One of the first steps taken by the Assembly towards constructing its new constitution, was thus to make the business of government an almost impossible task in France.
Hardly less mischievous than its dread of executive power was the passion for electoral contrivances which possessed the Assembly. It was to some extent this passion which had guided it in its rejection of an Upper Chamber, but the depth of the feeling was more strongly illustrated by the new system of local government, which it adopted in the winter of 1789-1790. Under this system all existing divisions and provincial distinctions were swept away, and the country was as nearly as possible symmetrically divided into 83 departments. These departments were further subdivided into 574 districts, into 4,730 cantons, and lastly into 44,000 communes or municipalities[6]. Of these four divisions the cantons possessed no administrative importance, being only invented for purposes of symmetry and to facilitate the electoral operations. But each of the others, each department, district, and municipality, had its own little constitution, based upon popular election, but with many varieties and complexities of form. Every department, district, and municipality had its own council or deliberative body, and its own executive officers too. The officials of the municipalities were elected directly by the citizens within them. But the higher officials of the districts and departments were, like the deputies to the National Assembly, elected by a double system of election. The primary assemblies of the cantons—that is all the 'active' citizens in each department—chose first a body of electors, and these electors then elected the officials of their own department, the officials of the districts which lay within that department, and lastly the deputies who were to represent the department in the National Assembly at Paris. The right of voting for all these officials was restricted to 'active' citizens, that is to all citizens over twenty-five years of age, who paid in direct taxes to the State a sum equal in amount to three days' wages. The right of standing for any of the offices was further restricted to those who paid direct taxes equal in amount to a mark of silver. All active citizens were required to serve in the National Guard, of which each municipality had its own battalion. The National Guards chose their own commanders, and were under the direct control of the municipal authorities, with whom the chief responsibility for the maintenance of order lay.