VIII

THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES

When the Assembly passed the Rights of Man, they acted in harmony for
the last time. Agreement on first principles did not involve agreement
in policy, and in applying them to the Constitution, a week later, the
division of parties appeared.

From the tennis court to the great constitutional debate, the
Moderates, who may be called the Liberals, were predominant. Mounier
was their tactician, Clermont Tonnerre and Lally Tollendal were their
orators, Malouet was their discreet adviser. They hoped, by the
division of powers and the multiplication of checks, to make their
country as free as England or America. They desired to control the
Representatives in three ways: by a Second Chamber, the royal veto,
and the right of dissolution. Their success depended on the support of
Ministers and of reconciled Conservatives. Whilst the Constitution for
them was a means of regulating and restraining the national will, it
was an instrument for accomplishing the popular will for their rivals
rising to power on the crest of the wave.

The Democrats refused to resist the people, legitimately governing
itself, either by the English or the American division of power. There
was little concentration yet of the working class in towns, for the
industrial age had hardly dawned, and it was hard to understand that
the Third Estate contained divergent interests and the material of a
coming conflict. The managers of the democratic party were Duport,
Lameth, and Barnave, aided sometimes by Sieyes, sometimes by
Talleyrand, and by their sworn enemy Mirabeau.

The nobles, weak in statesmanship, possessed two powerful debaters:
Cazales, who reminded men of Fox, but who, when not on his legs, had
little in him; and Maury, afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris,
a man whose character was below his talents. Numbering nearly a third
of the Assembly, and holding the balance, it was in their power to
make a Constitution like that of 1814.

How these three parties acted in that eventful September, and what in
consequence befell, we have now to consider.

The five weeks from August 27 to October 1 were occupied with the
constitutional debates. They were kept within narrow limits by the
Rights of Man, which declared that the nation transmits all powers and
exercises none. On both sides there were men who were impatient of
this restriction, and by whom it was interpreted in contrary ways.
Some wished for secu