tired to their two separate Apartments, or
Halls; and are there 'verifying their powers,' not in a conjoint but
in a separate capacity. They are to constitute two separate, perhaps
separately-voting Orders, then? It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy
had silently taken for granted that they already were such! Two Orders
against one; and so the Third Order to be left in a perpetual minority?

Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing fixed:
in the Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation's head. Double
representation, and all else hitherto gained, were otherwise futile,
null. Doubtless, the 'powers must be verified;'--doubtless, the
Commission, the electoral Documents of your Deputy must be inspected
by his brother Deputies, and found valid: it is the preliminary of all.
Neither is this question, of doing it separately or doing it conjointly,
a vital one: but if it lead to such? It must be resisted; wise was that
maxim, Resist the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even
dangerous, yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with Twenty-five
Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.--The inorganic mass
of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a 'system of inertia,' and
for the present remain inorganic.

Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the
Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with ever more
tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after week. For
six weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as
Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all. These were their
still creation-days; wherein they sat incubating! In fact, what they
did was to do nothing, in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body
reassembles; regrets that they cannot get organisation, 'verification of
powers in common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be
made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once unpunishable
and unconquerable.

Cunning must be met by cunning; proud pretension by inertia, by a low
tone of patriotic sorrow; low, but incurable, unalterable. Wise as
serpents; harmless as doves: what a spectacle for France! Six Hundred
inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit
there, on their elliptic benches, longing passionately towards life;
in painful durance; like souls waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken;
eloquent; audible within doors and without. Mind agitates i