e Revolution it is always so; the political and the
economic factors are constantly fusing the one in the other.

In a sense, what had happened was that the poor people, the democracy,
let us say, of Paris, had now got the King in the city and under their
influence; not only the King, but also the assembly,--for it had
followed Louis and was installed in a building adjacent to the
Tuileries. And the assembly became quickly conscious of the fact that
Paris was now unduly weighing on the representation of France, and
under the lead of Mirabeau attempted to assert itself. This was the
first feeble step towards the assumption of power that culminated three
years later in the appointment of {90} the Committee of Public Safety.
The assembly assumed a middle position between the King on the one hand
and the mob on the other. It voted the change of Louis' title from
King of France, by the grace of God, to King of the French, by virtue
of the Constitution; it repressed disorder by proclaiming martial law;
but in the continuation of its constitutional debates it asserted
unequivocally its middle-class composition. A handful of democrats,
Robespierre, Gregoire, and less than a dozen others, pleaded the rights
of the many, but the assembly declined to listen to them and confirmed,
by a nearly unanimous vote, the recommendations of its committees for
drawing up the declaration of rights and constitution. The greater
part of French citizens were thereby declared to have only passive, not
active rights, and were excluded from the franchise. The qualification
for voting was placed at the paying of taxes equal to 3 days' labour,
and for being a deputy paying in taxes one marc of silver, about 54
francs.

The outcry against this legislation was so loud, and so widespread, as
to show what genuine political aspirations were to be found in the mass
of the Parisian population. The greater part of that population was
excluded {91} from voting. For to say nothing of the fact that about
120,000 inhabitants were classed as paupers, it so happened that the
capitation tax had been remitted for a term of years, leaving only the
well-to-do shopkeeper, some part of the professional, and the
capitalist class on the voters' list. Workmen of the faubourg St.
Antoine signed a petition to be allowed to pay taxes so as to obtain a
vote. Robespierre, a narrow, prudish, jealous, puritanical but able
lawyer from Arras, with journalists like Desmoul