n of his capture and of his imprisonment on the throne, but
because, at the moment of his flight, he had avowed his hostility to
the institutions he administered.

The central idea in the plan of September 29, the idea of small
provinces and large municipalities, was never appreciated and never
adopted. Sieyes placed the unit in the Commune, which was the name he
gave to each of the nine divisions of a department. He intended that
there should be only 720 of these self-governing districts in France.
Instead of 720, the Assembly created 44,000, making the Commune no
larger than the parish, and breaking up the administrative system into
dust. The political wisdom of the village was substituted for that of
a town or district of 35,000 inhabitants.

The explanation of the disastrous result is as much in the Court as in
the Legislature, and as much in the legislation that followed as in
the policy of the moment in which the great issues were determined,
and with which we are dealing. No monarchical constitution could
succeed, after Varennes; and the one of which we are speaking, the
object of the memorable conflict between Mounier and Sieyes, is not
identical with the one that failed. The repudiation of the English
model did not cause the quick passage from the Constitution of 1791 to
the Republic. Yet the scheme that prevailed shows defects which must
bear their portion of blame. Political science imperatively demands
that powers shall be regulated by multiplication and division. The
Assembly preferred ideas of unity and simplicity.

The old policy of French parliaments nearly suggested a court of
revision; but that notion, not yet visible in the Supreme Court of the
United States, occurred to Sieyes long after. An effective Senate
might have been founded on the provincial assemblies; but the ancient
provinces were doomed, and the new divisions did not yet exist, or
were hidden in the maps of freemasonry.

Power was not really divided between the legislative and the
executive, for the king possessed no resource against the majority of
the Assembly. There was no Senate, no initiative, no dissolution, no
effective veto, no reliance on the judicial or the Federal element.
These are not defects of equal importance; but taken together, they
subverted that principle of division which is useful for stability,
and for liberty is essential.

The reproach falls not only on those who carried the various measures,
but also on the