by an Upper House, by the king's power
of dissolution, and by an absolute or a temporary veto.

Mounier had private friends among his opponents, and they opened a
negotiation with him. They were prepared to accept his two Houses and
his absolute veto. They demanded in return that the Senate should have
only a suspensive veto on the acts of the representatives, that there
should be no right of Dissolution, that Conventions should be held
periodically, to revise the Constitution. These offers were a sign of
weakness. The Constitutional party was still in the ascendant, and on
August 31 the Bishop of Langres, the chief advocate of a House of
Lords, was chosen President by 499 to 328. If the division of the
legislature into two was sure of a majority, then the proposed bargain
was one-sided, and the Democrats would have taken much more than they
gave. Mounier, counting on the support of those whose interest was
that he should succeed, rejected the offer. He had already been
forced, by the defection of friends, to abandon much that he would
have wished to keep; and the plan which he brought forward closely
resembled that under which France afterwards prospered.

Nevertheless, the failure of that negotiation is a fatal date in
constitutional history. With more address, and a better knowledge of
the situation, Mounier might have saved half of the securities he
depended on. He lost the whole. The things he refused to surrender at
the conference were rejected by the Assembly; and the offers he had
rejected were not made again. When the legislature was limited to two
years, the right of dissolution lost its value. The right of revision
would have caused no more rapid changes than actually ensued; for
there were fourteen Constitutions in eighty-six years, or a
fundamental revision every six or seven years. Lastly, the veto of the
Senate had no basis of argument, until it was decided how the Senate
should be composed.

The disastrous ruin of the cause was brought on by want of management,
and not by excess of conservatism. Mounier inclined to an hereditary
House of Peers; and that, after August 4, was not to be thought of.
But he knew the difficulty, and, however reluctantly, gave way. And he
attached undue importance to the absolute veto; but that was not the
point on which the conference broke up. He was supported by Lafayette,
who dreaded as much as he did the extinction of the royal power; at
times by Mirabeau, whom he dete