Some of the people in the galleries, after remaining a few moments silent and motionless, clapped their hands in applause of the great sacrifice which the clergy had offered; but the generality of the assembly, considering it as a constrained and not a free-will offering, while they rejoiced at the sacrifice, derided the sacrificers.

CHAPTER XIV.

Reflections on the Cruelty to which the Clergy were subjected— On the Power to be given to the King-The Project of two Chambers-The Galleries of the National Assembly-Maœuvres respecting the Audience-A Feast given by the Gardesdu-Corps to the Regiment of Flanders at Versailles-The National Assembly displeased with the King's Answer to their Address-The Transactions of the Entertainment misrepresented-Insurrection at Paris-M. La Fayette endeavours to quell it, without effect-The first Conductors of the Revolution justified-M. La Fayette marches with 20,000 men to Ver sailles.

THE national assembly have treated the clergy of France something in the same cruel manner that the Roman senate behaved in the third Punic war to the Carthaginians.

When the Carthaginians heard of the hostile preparations of the Romans, conscious of their own weakness, they declared themselves willing to submit to the discretion of the Roman people, and to the terms of peace they should exact. The senate applauded their prudence, and required hostages as pledges of their fidelity. The hostages were sent. The Roman consul, who was at Utica with his army, then required, in the name of the senate, that the Carthaginians should deliver up their arms and warlike stores; such things being useless to a people now under the protection of the Roman republic. The magistrates of Carthage were shocked at the rigour of this demand: after some hesitation, however, they acquiesced, saying they had an unbounded confidence in the justice of the senate. The consul, after highly praising their conduct,

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informed them that they must abandon Carthage, which it was the pleasure of the senate should be destroyed.

With similar perfidy the clergy of France were allured to join in the revolution, to make many sacrifices in the hopes of being protected in the possession of what re mained, and then obliged to rely on the justice of the assembly, which stripped them of the whole, except on conditions which their consciences prevented many of them from agreeing to. This refusal being represented as a crime, the unhappy clergy have at various periods been persecuted and massacred, all over the nation. The most striking difference between the cases is, that those whom the Romans treated in this perfidious and cruel manner had been for ages their ancient and inveterate enemies; whereas those whom the national assembly treated thus unjustly were their own countrymen, and that part of their countrymen whose peculiar duty it was to teach benevolence and good-will towards mankind.

One of the most important questions that was agitated by the national assembly, while they were employed in forming the constitution, regarded the degree of power to be placed in the hands of the king, and particularly whether his consent should be made necessary for giving the force of law to the decrees of the assembly. The Latin word veto, of which the tribunes of the Roman people made use when they gave a negative to a law, was adopted on this occasion to express the king's negative. The debates on this subject continued from the end of August till the middle of September, were carried on with extraordinary heat, and created a division in the assembly, which has continued through subsequent legislatures with augmenting hatred.

On this matter there were three opinions.

1. That the decrees of the assembly should be law, without any sanction from the king.

2. That the king should have an absolute negative on all decrees.

3. That the king's negative should not be absolute, but only suspensive.

During the debates on this subject it appeared, that the majority of the members were so apprehensive of a return of the old tyranny, that they overlooked many other dangers. They were so solicitous to secure the legislative power from the attempts of the executive, that they seem to have forgotten that it was a monarchical constitution which they had professed to establish; and weakened the executive power to such a degree as almost to render it useless ;-the consequence of which has been, that, in the progress of the revolution, the assembly itself has been insulted in the grossest manner, and the monarchy overturned.

Mirabeau, who wished to preserve the monarchy while he laboured to give freedom to his country, endeavoured to shew, that giving an absolute veto to the king tended to both those purposes; that it would prove a check also to crude and precipitate decrees, and might on some future occasion prevent an ambitious majority from tyrannizing over, perhaps expelling, the members who opposed them, and forming at last an odious and despoctic aristocracy with the name of a republic.

All Mirabeau's eloquence in support of the absolute veto proved ineffectual within the assembly; and without doors the prejudice against it was still greater. The open and unrestrained discussion of a political question was still a new enjoyment in France, and on the present occasion was pursued with all that ardour which new pleasures generally excite in that country. Very few understood what the word meant, or ever troubled themselves to inquire; yet men, women, and children, although according to the custom of the country eternally speaking, spoke of nothing, during several weeks, but the veto. In the same manner as some years ago, when the whole nation took a fancy to be eternally singing, they sang no other song but Malbrouck. To harangue against the veto in public places became a mark of patriotism; lists of

the members who spoke in its favour were handed about, and all those whose names were in the lists were execrated as traitors. In short, upon this as on many other occasions during the revolution, a violent storm was raised, and furious spirits rode in the whirlwind and directed it.

The most judicious as well as the most eloquent members were for giving the king an absolute negative on the decrees of the assembly. The majority, however, were so much intimidated by the clamours without doors, that they adopted the suspensive veto; decreeing that it should continue in force for two successive legislatures; but, if the third should approve of the suspended decree, it should then become a law without the royal sanction.

This measure, which was recommended by Necker and is praised by Rabaud de Saint Etienne, did not satisfy the king, and was still more displeasing to the people, who perceived little or no difference between this and the absolute veto. Mirabeau shewed more profound political knowledge than M. Necker or Rabaud, by placing himself among those who supported it; and at the same time he gave a proof that his love of popularity could not in a point so material make him act contrary to his opinion. The idea, that giving to the king an absolute veto on the acts of the assembly would gradually bring back the old despotism was what influenced the deputies who opposed it. Mirabeau saw that other articles in the constitution would prevent such an effect, and that the spirit of the times alone rendered it almost impossible. He probably also foresaw, that the suspensive veto would become a continual cause of jealousy and discord between the king and the assembly. But even if this prerogative, which seems to have been highly necessary, had been established in the constitution, still a prudent minister would not have advised the king to make use of it, until the jealousies of the people were dissipated, and the government regularly formed; and perhaps not even then, unless it was evident that the monarch, in giving his ne

gative to a decree of the assembly, had a respectable minority of the assembly, and a very decided majority of the people at large, of his opinion. With all these precautions, the veto in particular instances might still be erroneously given: the king, the minority of the assembly, and the majority of the public, might be in the wrong, and the majority of the assembly in the right: yet if the king's negative were never used except in such circumstances, it never could create jealousy of the power of the crown on the one hand, or fears for the freedom of the nation on the other.

The suspensive veto became, soon after the king's acceptance of the constitution, an object of jealousy, and was no sooner made use of than it became the cause, or was made the pretext, of the most fatal discord.

The next important subject of debate happened in consequence of a proposal made by M. de Lally-Tolendal in the name of the commission of constitution, that the legislature should consist of a lower and upper house. According to the first idea, the upper house was to be composed of members chosen for life. M. Mounier preferred their being chosen for seven years.

Those who had opposed the veto were as violent against the two chambers or houses. They dreaded that the influence of the court would at some time or other form the upper house of the higher nobility, and render it hereditary. They endeavoured to ridicule the idea of a balance of power in the various branches of the legis lature; and shutting their eyes to all the advantages of the British constitution, they declaimed against its abuses. Yet, if two houses have been found beneficial in the British legislature, and if two chambers of representatives have been of use in the American, by affording time for reflection before decrees are finally passed; so far from opposing their introduction, it might have been expected of those members who were best acquainted with the characters of Frenchmen, that, instead of two chambers, they would have tried to establish three in the new con