ion of July 10, 1792).]

CHAPTER V. PARIS.

I.--Pressure of the Assembly on the King.

His veto rendered void or eluded.--His ministers insulted
and driven away.--The usurpations of his Girondist
ministry.--He removes them.--Riots being prepared.

Previous to this the tree was so shaken as to be already tottering at
its base.--Reduced as the King's prerogative is, the Jacobins still
continue to contest it, depriving him of even its shadow. At the opening
session they refuse to him the titles of Sire and Majesty; to them he
is not, in the sense of the constitution, a hereditary representative
of the French people, but "a high functionary," that is to say, a mere
employee, fortunate enough to sit in an equally good chair alongside
of the president of the Assembly, whom they style "president of the
nation."[2501] The Assembly, in their eyes, is sole sovereign, "while
the other powers," says Condorcet, "can act legitimately only when
specially authorized by a positive law;[2502] the Assembly may do
anything that is not formally prohibited to it by the law," 'in other
words, interpret the constitution, then change it, take it to pieces,
and do away with it. Consequently, in defiance of the constitution, it
takes upon itself the initiation of war, and, on rare occasions, on
the King using his veto, it sets this aside, or allows it to be set
aside.[2503] In vain he rejects, as he has a legal right to do, the
decrees which sanction the persecution of unsworn ecclesiastics, which
confiscate the property of the emigres, and which establish a camp
around Paris. At the suggestion of the Jacobin deputies,[2504] the
unsworn ecclesiastics are interned, expelled, or imprisoned by the
municipalities and Directories; the estates and mansions of the
emigres and of their relatives are abandoned without resistance to the
jacqueries; the camp around Paris is replaced by the summoning of
the Federates to Paris. In short, the monarch's sanction is eluded or
dispensed with.--As to his ministers, "they are merely clerks of the
Legislative Body decked with a royal leash."[2505] In full session they
are maltreated, reviled, grossly insulted, not merely as lackeys of bad
character, but as known criminals. They are interrogated at the bar of
the house, forbidden to leave Paris before their accounts are examined;
their papers are overhauled; their most guarded expressions and most
meritorious acts are held to be crimina