despots have ever done. We cannot penetrate the secrets of Providence.
It may have been ordered in divine justice and wisdom that the French
people should work out their own deliverance in their own way, in
mistakes, in suffering, and in violence, and point the eternal moral
that inexperience, vanity, and ignorance are fatal to sound legislation,
and sure to lead to errors which prove disastrous; that national
progress is incompatible with crime; that evils can only gradually be
removed; that wickedness ends in violence.

A majority of the deputies meant well. They were earnest, patriotic, and
enthusiastic. But they knew nothing of the science of government or of
constitution-making, which demand the highest maturity of experience and
wisdom. As I have said, nearly four hundred of them were country
lawyers, as conceited as they were inexperienced. Both Mirabeau and
Sieyes had a supreme contempt for them as a whole. They wanted what they
called rights, and were determined to get them any way they could,
disregarding obstacles, disregarding forms and precedents. And they were
backed up and urged forward by ignorant mobs, and wicked demagogues who
hated the throne, the clergy, and the nobles. Hence the deputies made
mistakes. They could see nothing better than unscrupulous destruction.
And they did not know how to reconstruct. They were bewildered and
embarrassed, and listened to the orators of the Palais Royal.

The first thing of note which occurred when they resolved to call
themselves the National Assembly and not the Third Estate, which they
were only, was done by Mirabeau. He ascended the tribune, when Breze,
the master of ceremonies, came with a message from the King for them to
join the other orders, and said in his voice of melodious thunder, "We
are here by the command of the people, and will only disperse by the
force of bayonets." From that moment, till his death, he ruled the
Assembly. The disconcerted messenger returned to his sovereign. What did
the King say at this defiance of royal authority? Did he rise in wrath
and indignation, and order his guards to disperse the rebels? No; the
amiable King said meekly, "Well, let them remain there." What a king for
such stormy times! O shade of Richelieu, thy work has perished!
Rousseau, a greater genius than thou wert, hath undermined the
institutions and the despotism of two hundred years.

Only two courses were now open to the King,--this weak and kind-hearted
Lo