The rest of the assembly consisted of the national party. As yet there were not observed in it men who, like Robespierre, Pétion, Buzot, etc., wished to begin a second revolution when the first was accomplished. At this period the most extreme of this party were Duport, Barnave, and Lameth, who formed a triumvirate, whose opinions were prepared by Duport, sustained by Barnave, and managed by Alexander Lameth. There was something remarkable and announcing the spirit of equality of the times, in this intimate union of an advocate belonging to the middle classes, of a counsellor belonging to the parliamentary class, and a colonel belonging to the court, renouncing the interests of their order to unite in views of the public good and popular happiness. This party at first took a more advanced position than that which the revolution had attained. The 14th of July had been the triumph of the middle class; the constituent assembly was its legislature, the national guard its armed force, the mayoralty its popular power. Mirabeau, Lafayette, Bailly, relied on this class; one was its tribune, the other its general, and the third its magistrate. Duport, Barnave, and Lameth's party were of the principles and sustained the interests of that period of the revolution; but this party, composed of young men of ardent patriotism, who entered on public affairs with superior qualities, fine talents, and elevated positions, and who joined to the love of liberty the ambition of playing a leading part, placed itself from the first rather in advance of the revolution of July the 14th. Its fulcrum within the assembly was the members of the extreme left without, in the clubs, in the nation, in the party of the people, who had co-operated on the 14th of July, and who were unwilling that the bourgeoisie alone should derive advantage from the victory. By putting itself at the head of those who had no leaders, and who being a little out of the government aspired to enter it, it did not cease to belong to this first period of the revolution; only it formed a kind of democratic opposition, even in the middle class itself, only differing from its leaders on a few unimportant points, and voting with them on most questions. It was, among these popular men, rather a patriotic emulation than a party dissension.