Within the Committee they framed the Constitution of 1793—that great monument of democracy, which never took its place in history, nor ever affected the lives of men. It stands like an idol of great beauty which travellers find in a desert place; its religion has disappeared from the earth; no ruins surround it; in the day when it was put up the men who raised it were driven from what should have been the centre of their adoration. That Danton was still in power when the result was debated in the Parliament during the third week of the month is evident from two things: first, that the Constitution, with its broad guarantees of individual liberty and of local autonomy, with its liberal spirit, so nearly approaching the great dream of Condorcet, so opposed to the narrow fanaticism of the Jacobins, was definitely intended to appease the growing passions of civil war. Two-thirds of France, of the country-sides at least, was arming because Paris had dared to touch the representatives of the nation. The Constitution was thrown like a hostage; the men who saw the necessity for a dictatorship said virtually, “The violence that offends you is only for a moment. Here is what we desire with the return of peace.” And the document so responded to the heart of France that it succeeded. The second proof that Danton had still hold of the reins is to be found in this: that the advice which he gives during the discussions on the Constitution is not that of violence, nor of flattery, but of moderate common-sense; and of such advice which the Convention accepts the best example is to be found in the speech on the power of making war. It was a difficult thing to convince the Assembly, in those days of abstractions, that the nation, as a whole, could not exercise such a right without hopeless confusion. Yet Danton had his way. This month of June, then, which was so full of terrible internal danger, during which Buzot had raised a Girondin army sixty miles from Paris, during which Normandy was in full revolt, during which Lyons had attacked the Republic, and during which the counter-Revolution seemed on the point of breaking out—this month was still Danton’s own. He was secure in his public position, for the very conquerors of the 2nd of June, the violent extremists, could not prevent him from exercising his diplomacy abroad and his pacificatory compromise in domestic affairs.