members who, adhering to the constitution but
determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legislature
had they been re-elected. All of these, except a very small group of
revolutionaries, had learned something by experience, and, in the last
days of their session, two serious events, the king's flight and the
riot in the Champ de Mars, had made them acquainted with the defects of
their machinery. With this executive instrument in their hands for three
months, they see that it is racked, that things are tottering, and
that they themselves are being run over by fanatics and the crowd.
They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and several even think of
retracing their steps.[2110] They cut loose from the Jacobins; of
the three or four hundred deputies on the club list in the Rue St.
Honore[2111] but seven remain; the rest form at the Feuillants a
distinct opposition club, and at their head are the first founders,
Duport, the two Lameths, Barnave, the authors of the constitution,
all the fathers of the new regime.[2112] In the last decree of the
Constituent Assembly they loudly condemn the usurpations of popular
associations, and not only interdict to these all meddling in
administrative or political matters, but likewise any collective
petition or deputation.[2113]--Here may the friends of order find
candidates whose chances are good, for, during two years and more, each
in his own district is the most conspicuous, the best accredited, and
the most influential man there; he stands well with his electors on
account of the popularity of the constitution he has made, and it is
very probable that his name would rally to it a majority of votes.-The
Jacobins, however, have foreseen this danger: Four months earlier,[2114]
with the aid of the Court, which never missed an opportunity to ruin
itself and everything else,[2115] they made the most of the grudges
of the conservatives and the weariness of the Assembly. Tired and
disgusted, in a fit of mistaken selflessness, the Assembly, through
enthusiasm and taken by surprise, passes an act declaring all its
members ineligible for election to the next Assembly dismissing in
advance the leaders of the gentlemen's party.

III.--The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage.

Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the
provinces.--Legal prevention of conservative associations.

If the latter (the honest men of the Right), in spite