non-interference, and had no policy
but expectation. The initiative passed to every private member. The
members consisted of new men, without connection or party
organisation. They wanted time to feel their way, and missed a
moderator and a guide. The governing power ceased, for the moment, to
serve the supreme purpose of government; and monarchy transformed
itself into anarchy to see what would come of it, and to avoid
committing itself on either side against the class by which it was
always surrounded or the class which seemed ready with its alliance.

The Government renounced the advantage which the elections and the
temperate instructions gave them; and in the hope that the elect would
be at least as reasonable as the electors, they threw away their
greatest opportunity. There was a disposition to underrate dangers
that were not on the surface. Even Mirabeau, who, if not a deep
thinker, was a keen observer, imagined that the entire mission of the
States-General might have been accomplished in a week. Few men saw the
ambiguity hidden in the term Privilege, and the immense difference
that divided fiscal change from social change. In attacking feudalism,
which was the survival of barbarism, the middle class designed to
overthrow the condition of society which gave power as well as
property to a favoured minority. The assault on the restricted
distribution of power involved an assault on the concentration of
wealth. The connection of the two ideas is the secret motive of the
Revolution. At that time the law by which power follows property,
which has been called the most important discovery made by man since
the invention of printing, was not clearly known. But the underground
forces at work were recognised by the intelligent conservatives, and
they were assuming the defensive, in preparation for the hour when
they would be deserted by the king. It was therefore impossible that
the object for which the States-General were summoned should be
attained while they were divided into three. Either they must be
dissolved, or the thing which the middle-class deputies could not
accomplish by use of forms would be attempted by the lower class,
their masters and employers, by use of force.

Before the meeting Malouet once more approached the minister with
weighty counsel. He said: "You now know the wishes of France; you know
the instructions, you do not know the deputies. Do not leave all
things to the arbitrament of the unknown