his chamber was to sit
for two years, the King having no authority to dissolve or prorogue it;
and it was to possess full legislative power subject to the King's
suspensive veto.

The King was chief executive official, with a large power of
appointment, and general control of matters of foreign policy. He was
not to choose his ministers from among the deputies, and he lost all
direct administrative control in the local sense. The intendants, and
the provinces, and the generalites were gone; instead of them was a new
territorial division into departments, in which local elective
self-government was established. Communes and departments were to
choose their own governing {127} committees, and the old centralized
administration of the Bourbons had for the moment to make way for an
opposite conception of government.

The signing of the constitution by the King brought it into effect, and
thereby an election became necessary for constituting the new
representative body, a body that was to be known as the _Legislative_.
Before leaving its parent body, however, that began as States-General,
became a national assembly and was later known as the _Constituante_, a
word or two may be added to emphasize points not yet sufficiently
indicated. The assembly changed in opinion and attitude during the
course of its history, and was vastly different in September 1791 from
what it had been in May 1789. It did achieve the purpose of
translating a large part of the demands of the cahiers into legislative
enactments; yet it did not learn the meaning of the word toleration,
and it did not pave the way for liberty, but only for a doctrine of
liberty.

The elections to the _Legislative_ took place in September, under the
influence of several cross currents of opinion. There was a slight
reaction among certain classes in Paris in favour of the King, and
several demonstrations took {128} place which an abler and more active
monarch might have turned to advantage. On the other hand, the Jacobin
Club attempted to use its machinery to influence the action of the
electoral meetings. As a result, when the deputies met on the 1st of
October, it was calculated that about 400 belonged to the floating
central mass, 136 to the Jacobins, that is, Jacobins in the new
Robespierre-Danton sense, 264 to the _Feuillants_. Among the latter
there was a general inclination towards a policy of rehabilitating the
royal power.

The personnel of the new a