this question
one must bear in mind the historical precedents before them. French
opinion was strongly impregnated with the apparent lessons of the great
revolution that had occurred in England a little more than one hundred
years before. There a republic, founded in revolt from incompetent
{110} monarchy, had failed, and had made way for a military
dictatorship, which also had failed, to be replaced by the restored
monarchy. And, last of all, eventual success had come from a bargain
or compromise between the upper and middle class on the one hand and
the King on the other. This was the historic precedent best known and
generally uppermost in the minds of the men of the national assembly.

But there was another precedent, that of the American revolution, and
it tended in the opposite direction. Few, indeed, perceived that
Washington had succeeded where Cromwell had failed; and the event was
too near in time, too distant in space, too remote in surroundings, to
have as much bearing as it should. Yet the impression made was
considerable. Benjamin Franklin's picturesque and worthy republicanism
was not forgotten: his plain clothes and robust sense, his cheerful
refrain of _ca ira_,--it's all right,--so soon to be the song of the
French republicans themselves. The men of Rochambeau's army too, had
caught the infection, had seen republicanism in war, the brave and
capable commanding whatever their station in life; and in that army
were many rankers, held down by the Bourbon regime, who were soon to
become the {111} victorious generals of the French Republic. Again the
constitutional documents of the Americans had been consulted,
studied,--declarations of right, State constitutions. And all this
tended towards republicanism.

Yet even the American example did not mean republicanism in the
democratic sense. And the movement that became so marked about
December 1790 was distinctly towards a democratic republic. Many
prominent journalists were of that way of thought. Desmoulins had been
even in 1789. The franchise restrictions which the assembly was
drafting into the Constitution gave the papers a good text. It was
pointed out that whereat all Frenchmen had been admitted to vote for
the States-General, under the proposed constitution there would be but
two million voters. Why should not the poor man have a vote? Why
should not even women have a vote? Should there not be equality of
rights and no invidious di