lation, is broken through, the old
barriers are shaken down; great centralized states send official,
economic, and national action sweeping back and forth; great armies
tramp through the whole breadth of Europe; roads are built in all
directions to facilitate their movements, people begin to know one
another, to mix, to form larger conceptions of humanity.

The most potent of the agencies that effected this change in Paris was
the direct work of the deputies themselves. The move to the capital
had been attended by the formation of several well-marked currents of
opinion among the deputies. One of these had been a movement of
protest,--of protest and in part of timidity. The violence and
compulsion applied to the King, and all that the removal to Paris
implied {94} under such circumstances, had led to the withdrawal of
about 200 members of the assembly. Of these Mounier was the chief; he
returned to his province of Dauphine and attempted to provoke
constitutional action to free the King from the domination of Paris.
His efforts were unsuccessful and he eventually had to leave the
country. This group, however, of which Mounier was the boldest member,
represented merely a negative force, dispersion; another, equally
large, stood for something more concrete.

The Club Breton began to develop very rapidly after the removal to
Paris. Its members, styling themselves _Amis de la Constitution_,
eventually settled themselves in quarters conveniently near the palace
at the Jacobin monastery. Here the club quickly became a debating
association, and the headquarters of a party. Early in 1790 it began
to develop a system of affiliating clubs all through France, and by
August of that year had planted 150 Jacobin colonies in direct
correspondence with the mother society. By 1794 this number had grown
to a thousand, and Jacobinism had become a creed. But in 1789 and 1790
the Jacobins were as yet moderate in their views; they were the men who
wanted to create a {95} constitution under the monarchy; they were
presided during that period by such men as the Duc de Noailles, the Duc
d'Aiguillon, and Mirabeau.

Mirabeau stood out in the assembly as the one constructive statesman,
the one man who might bridge the gulf that still separated the deputies
from the responsibility of power and the practice of government. If a
constitutional or parliamentary ministry were possible, if both King
and assembly would recognise in that the p