en. Inaction and
delay had not been a policy, but the preliminary of a policy. It was
reasonable to say that they would try every possible effort before
resorting to aggression; but it would have been unmeaning to say that
they would begin by doing nothing, and that afterwards they would
continue to do nothing. Their enemy had been beforehand with them in
making mistakes. They might hazard something with less danger now.

Victory indeed was assured by the defection among the nobles and the
clergy. Near fifty of the one, and certainly more than one hundred of
the others, were ready to come over. Instead of being equal, the
parties were now two to one. Six hundred Commons could not control the
same number of the deputies of privilege. But eight hundred deputies
were more than a match for four hundred. Therefore, on June 10, the
Commons opened the attack and summoned the garrison. Mirabeau gave
notice that one of the Paris deputies had an important motion to
submit. The mover was more important than the motion, for this was the
apparition of Sieyes, the most original of the revolutionary
statesmen, who, within a fortnight of this, his maiden speech, laid
low the ancient monarchy of France. He was a new member, for the Paris
elections had been delayed, the forty deputies took their seats three
weeks after the opening, and Sieyes was the last deputy chosen. He
objected to the existing stagnation, believing that there was no duty
to the nobles that outweighed the duty to France. He proposed that the
other orders be formally invited to join, and that the House should
proceed to constitute itself, and to act with them if they came,
without them if they stayed away. The returns were accordingly
verified, and Sieyes then moved that they should declare themselves
the National Assembly, the proper name for that which they claimed to
be.

In spite of Malouet, and even of Mirabeau, on June 17 this motion was
carried by 491 to 90. All taxes became dependent on the Assembly. The
broad principle on which Sieyes acted was that the Commons were really
the nation. The upper classes were not an essential part of it. They
were not even a natural and normal growth, but an offending
excrescence, a negative quantity, to be subtracted, not to be added
up. That which ought not to exist ought not to be represented. The
deputies of the Third Estate appeared for the whole. Alone they were
sufficient to govern it, for alone they were identified wit