weight of the feudal chains, and they destroyed the whole nobility. The monarch had been too powerful for the liberties of the subject-they now bound him as a slave at the feet of the legislative authority. Their arch of liberty gave way, because they hesitated to place upon it, in the shape of an efficient executive government, a weight sufficient to keep it steady. Yet to these men France was indebted for the first principles of civil liberty. They kindled the flame, though they could not regulate it; and such as now enjoy its temperate warmth should have sympathy for the errors of those to whom they owe a boon so inestimable ;nor should this sympathy be the less, that so many perished in the conflagration, which, at the commencement, they had fanned too rashly. They did even more, for they endeavoured to heal the wounds of the nation by passing an act of general amnesty, which at once placed in security the Jacobins of the Champ de Mars, and the unfortunate companions of the King's flight. This was one of their last and wisest decrees, could they have enforced its observance by their successors.

The adieus which they took of power were any thing but prophetic. They pronounced the Revolution ended, and the Constitution completed-the one was but commencing, and the other was baseless as a morning dream.

VOL. VIII.

CHAPTER VII.

Legislative Assembly-Its Composition-Constitutionalists -Girondists or Brissotins-Jacobins.—Views and Sentiments of Foreign Nations-England-Views of the Tories and Whigs-Anacharsis Clootz-Austria-Prussia -Russia-Sweden.-Emigration of the French Princes and Clergy-Increasing Unpopularity of Louis from this Cause.-Death of the Emperor Leopold, and its Effects. -France declares War.-Views and Interests of the different Parties in France at this Period.—Decree against Monsieur-Louis interposes his Veto.-Decree against the Priests who should refuse the Constitutional Oath— Louis again interposes his Veto-Consequences of these Refusals.-Fall of De Lessart.-Ministers now chosen from the Brissotins.-All Parties favourable to War.

THE First, or Constituent Assembly, in destroying almost all which existed as law in France, when they were summoned together as StatesGeneral, had preserved, at least in form, the name and power of a monarch. The Legislative Assembly, which succeeded them, seemed preparing to destroy the symbol of royalty which their predecessors had left standing, though surrounded by republican enactments.

The composition of this second body of representatives was much more unfavourable to the royal cause than that of those whom they succeed

ed. In a bad hour for France and themselves, the Constituent Assembly had adopted two regulations, which had the same disabling effect on their own political interest, as the celebrated self-denying ordinance in the Long Parliament had upon that of the Presbyterians. By the first of these decrees, the members of the Constituent Assembly were rendered incapable of being elected to that which should succeed its dissolution: by the second, they were declared ineligible to be ministers of the crown, until two years had elapsed after their sitting as legislators. Those individuals who had already acquired some political knowledge and information, were thus virtually excluded from the counsels of the state, and pronounced inadmissible into the service of the crown. This exclusion was adopted upon the wild principle of levelling, which was one prime moving spring of the Revolution, and which affected to destroy even the natural aristocracy of talents. "Who are the distinguished members whom the speaker mentions?" said a Jacobin orator, in the true spirit of this imaginary equality;" There are no members of the Assembly more distinguished than others by talents or skill, any more than by birth or rank-We are all EQUAL. Rare words indeed, and flattering, doubtless, to many in the Assembly. Unhappily

1 [Mignet, t. i., p. 141; Dumont, p. 244.]

["One evening M. de Narbonne made use of this expression: 'I appeal to the most distinguished members of this Assembly.' At that moment the whole party of the Mountain rose up in a fury, and Merlin, Bazire, and Chabot, declared, that 'all the deputies were equally distinguished.""-M. DE STAEL, t. ii., p. 39.]

no legislative decree can give sense to folly, or experience to ignorance; it could only prevent a certain portion of wisdom and talent from being called into the service of the country. Both King and people were necessarily obliged to put their confidence in men of inexperience in business, liable to act with all the rashness by which inexperience is generally attended. As the Constituent Assembly contained the first and readiest choice among the men of ability whom France had in her bosom, it followed that the second Assembly could not be equal to the first in abundance of talent; but still the Legislative Assembly held in its ranks many men of no ordinary acquirements, and a few of a corresponding boldness and deterImination of character. A slight review of the parties into which it was divided, will show how much the influence of the crown was lowered in the scale.

There was no party remained which could be termed strictly or properly Royalist. Those who were attached to the old monarchy of France were now almost all exiles, and there were left but few even of that second class of more moderate and more reasonable Royalists, who desired to establish a free constitution on the basis of an effective monarchy, strong enough to protect the laws against license, but not sufficiently predominant to alter or overthrow them. Cazalès,' whose chivalrous de

[Cazalès, one of the most brilliant orators of the Assembly, was born at Grenade-sur-la-Garonne, in 1752. He died in 1805. In 1821, Les Discours et Opinions de Cazalès were published at Paris, in an octavo volume.]

fence of the nobility,-Maury,' whose eloquent pleadings for the Church,-had so often made an honourable but vain struggle against the advances of revolution, were now silent and absent, and the few feeble remnants of their party had ranged themselves with the Constitutionalists, who were so far favourers of monarchy as it made part of their favourite system-and no farther. La Fayette continued to be the organ of that party, and had assembled under his banners Duport,2 Barnave, Lameth, all of whom had striven to keep pace with the headlong spirit of the Revolution, but, being outstripped by more active and forward champions of the popular cause, now shifted ground, and formed a union with those who were disposed to maintain, that the present constitution was adapted to all the purposes of free and effectual government, and that, by its creation, all farther revolutionary measures were virtually superseded.

In stern opposition to those admirers of the constitution, stood two bodies of unequal numbers, strength, and efficacy; of which the first was determined that the Revolution should never stop until the downfall of the monarchy, while the second entertained the equally resolved purpose of urging these changes still farther onwards, to the total destruction of all civil order, and the establishment

[Shortly after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Maury retired to Italy, where he became a cardinal. In 1806, he returned to France, and in 1810 was made, by Napoleon, Archbishop of Paris. He died at Rome in 1817.]

2

[After the 10th of August, 1792, Duport filed to Switzerland, where he died in 1798.]