VII.

1791.

to those interested in the former as well as in the latter CHAP. of these objects. In private life, men are never deceived on this subject. If a party are embarked in a boat on a stormy sea, there is no need to take any peculiar care of the safety of any of the number. The poor sailor will struggle for his life as hard as the wealthy peer. But very different precautions are required to protect the palace of the latter from pillage, from what are found necessary in the cottage of the former. In the administration of any common fund, or the disposal of common property, it never was for a moment proposed to give the smallest shareholder an equal right with the greatest-to give a creditor holding a claim for twenty shillings, for example, on a bankrupt estate, the same vote as one possessed of a bond for £10,000; or to give the owner of ten pound stock in a public company the same influence as one holding ten thousand. The injustice of such a proceeding is at once apparent. The interests of the large shareholders would run the most imminent risk of being violated or neglected by those whose stake was so much more inconsiderable. Universally it has been found, by experience, to be indispensable to make the amount of influence in the direction of any concern be in some degree proportional to the amount of property of which the voter is possessed in it.

3.

which they

In the political world, the supposed or immediate interests of the great body of the people are not only different Causes to but adverse to those of the possessors of property. To are owing. acquire is the interest of the one; to retain, that of the other. Agrarian laws, and the equal division of property, or measures tending indirectly to that result, will, in every age, be the wish of the unthinking multitude, who have nothing apparently to lose, and everything to gain, by such convulsions. Their real and ultimate interests, indeed, will in the end inevitably suffer, even more than those of the holders of property, from such changes; because, being dependent for their subsistence on the wages of labour,

VII.

1791.

CHAP. they will be the greatest losers by their intermission from the effects of such a convulsion. But that is a remote consequence, which never will become obvious to the great body of mankind. In the ordinary state of society, the superior intelligence and moral energy of the higher orders give them the means of effectually controlling this natural but dangerous tendency on the part of their inferiors. But universal suffrage, or a low franchise, levels all barriers, and reduces the contests of mankind to a mere calculation of numbers. In such a system the vote of Napoleon or Newton, of Bacon or Burke, has no more weight than that of an ignorant mechanic. Representatives elected under such a system are in reality nothing more than delegates of the least informed and most dangerous, but at the same time most numerous portion of the people. Government, constructed on such a basis, is a mere puppet in the hands of an incapable majority. It is the tyranny of mediocrity over talent for the vast majority of men are always mediocre, and the mediocre are invariably jealous of ability, unless it is subservient to themselves. The contests of party in such circumstances resolve themselves into a mere strife of contending interests, in which the wishes of the majority, however it may be composed, speedily become irresistible. In periods of tranquillity, when interest is the ruling principle, this petty warfare may produce only a selfish system of legislation; in moments of agitation, when passion is predominant, it occasions a universal insurrection of the lower orders against the higher.

4.

of the Legis

sembly.

The truth of these observations was signally demonFormation strated in the history of the Legislative Assembly. By lative As the enactments of its predecessor, the whole powers of sovereignty had been vested in the people. They had obtained what almost amounted to universal suffrage, and biennial elections; their representatives wielded despotic authority; they appointed their own magistrates, judges, and bishops; the military force of the state was in their

VII.

hands; their delegates commanded the national guard, and CHAP. ruled the armies. In possession of such unresisted authority, it was difficult to see what more they could desire, 1791. or what pretence could remain for insurrection against the government. Nevertheless, the legislature which they had themselves appointed became, from the very first, the object of their dislike and jealousy; and the history of the Legislative Assembly is nothing more than the preparations for the revolt which overthrew the monarchy. This," says the republican historian Thiers, "is the natural progress of revolutionary troubles. Ambition, the love of power, first arises in the higher orders; they exert themselves, and obtain a share of the supreme authority. But the same passion descends in society; it rapidly gains an inferior class, until at length the whole mass is in movement. Satisfied with what they have gained, all persons of intelligence strive to stop; but it is no longer in their power, they are incessantly pressed on by the crowd in their rear. Those who thus endeavour to arrest the movement, even if they are but little elevated above the lowest class, if they oppose its wishes, are called an aristocracy, and incur its odium."1

Lac. Pr.

Hist. i. 178.

Th. ii. 7.

5.

country

elections.

Two unfortunate circumstances contributed, from the outset, to injure the formation of the Assembly. These were, State of the the King's flight to Varennes, and the universal emigration during the of the nobles during the period of the primary elections. primary The intelligence of the disappearance of the royal family was received in most of the departments at the very time of the election of the delegates who were to choose the deputies. Terror, distrust, and anxiety in consequence seized every breast; a general explosion of the royal partisans June 26. was expected; foreign invasion, domestic strife, universal suffering, were imagined to be at hand. Under the influence of these alarms, the primary elections, or the nomination of the electoral colleges, took place. But before these delegates proceeded to name the deputies, the panic had in some degree passed away; the seizure of the King July 21.

VOL. II.

H

VII.

CHAP. had dissipated the causes of immediate apprehension; and the revolt of the Jacobins in the Champ de Mars had 1791. opened a new source of disquietude. Hence the nomination of the deputies was far from corresponding, in all instances, with the wishes of the original electors: the latter selected, for the most part, energetic, reckless men, calculated to meet the stormy times which were anticipated; the former strove to intersperse among them a few persons who might have an interest in maintaining 1 Hist. Parl, the institutions which had been formed-the one elected 147, to destroy, the other to preserve. The majority of the vi. 337, 342. deputies were men inclined to support the constitution as Moll. vi. 25, it was now established; the majority of the original 192. electors were desirous of a more extensive revolution, and a thorough establishment of republican institutions.1

Deux Amis,

Bert, de

37. Th. i.

6.

of property

in the new

ous prepon

young men in it.

But there was one circumstance worthy of especial Total want notice in the composition of this second Assembly, which or decorum was its almost total separation from the property of the Assembly, kingdom. In this respect it offered a striking contrast to and danger the Constituent Assembly, which, though ruled by the derance of Tiers Etat after the pernicious union of the orders, yet numbered among its members some of the greatest proprietors and many of the noblest names in the kingdom. But in the Legislative Assembly there were not fifty persons possessed of £100 a-year. The property of France was thus totally unrepresented, either directly by the influence of its holders in the elections, or indirectly by sympathy and identity of interest between the members of the Assembly and the class of proprietors. The Legislature was composed almost entirely of presumptuous and half-educated young men, clerks in counting-houses, or attorneys from provincial towns, who had risen to eminence during the absence of all persons possessed of property, and recommended themselves to public notice by the vehemence with which, in the popular clubs, they had asserted the principles of democracy. The extreme youth of the greater part of its members was not the least dangerous

VII.

1791.

of its many dangerous qualities. When the Assembly CHAP. met, the first impression was, that the whole grey hairs had disappeared. When the president, to form one of the committees, desired the men under twenty-six years of age to present themselves, sixty youths, the most of them of still earlier years, stepped forward. It was easy to see, from the aspect of the faces, that the Assembly was composed of a new generation, which had broken with all the feelings of the past. These young men had, in general, talent sufficient to make them both arrogant and dangerous, without either knowledge profound enough to moderate their views, or property adequate to steady their ambition. So great was the preponderance of this dangerous class in the new Assembly, that it appeared at once in the manner in which the debates were conducted. The dignified politeness which, amidst all its rashness and crimes, the Constituent Assembly had displayed, was no more. Rudeness and vulgarity had become the order of the day, and were affected even by those who had been bred to better habits. Such was the din and confusion, that twenty deputies often rushed together to the tribune, each with a different motion. In vain the president Bert. de appealed to the Assembly to support his authority, rang 41. Burke's his bell, and covered his face with his hat, in token of Works, vii. utter despair. Nothing could control the vehement and hom. iv. vulgar majority. If a demon had selected a body cal- Hist. des culated to consign a nation to perdition, his choice could 357. not have been made more happily to effect his object.1*

Moll. vi. 40,

51. Prud

118. Lam.

Gir. i. 356,

This deplorable result was, in part at least, owing to the 7. flight of the nobility, so prolific of disaster to France in Increased all the stages of the Revolution. The continued and of nobles. increasing emigration of the landholders contributed in the

"L'Assemblée Législative fut nommée par une foule de gens sans aveu, courant les villes et les champs, vendant leurs suffrages pour un dîner ou un broc de vin. Le corps législatif était plein de gens de cette trempe: Royalistes ou Républicains selon le vent de la fortune : et il faut le dire, quoiqu'à la honte de la Révolution, ce furent là les élémens de la journée du 10 Août.”—PRUDHOMME, Crimes de la Révolution, iv. 116, 118.

emigration