The Constituent Assembly was then blind and weak, not to create a republic as the natural instrument of the Revolution. Mirabeau, Bailly, La Fayette, Sieyes, Barnave, Talleyrand, and Lameth acted in this respect like philosophers, and not great politicians, as events have amply proved. They believed the Revolution finished as soon as it was written, and the monarchy converted as soon as it had sworn to preserve the constitution. The Revolution was but begun, and the oath of royalty to the Revolution as futile as the oath of the Revolution to royalty. These two elements could not mingle until after an interval of an age--this interval was the republic. A nation does not change in a day, or in fifty years, from revolutionary excitements to monarchical repose. It is because we forgot it at the hour when we should have remembered it, that the crisis was so terrible, and that we yet feel its effects. If the Revolution, which perpetually follows itself, had had its own natural and fitting government, the republic--this republic would have been less tumultuous and less perturbed than the five attempts we made for a monarchy. The nature of the age in which we live protests against the traditional forms of power: at an epoch of movement--a government of movement--such is the law. XIV. The National Assembly, it is said, had not the right to act thus; for it had sworn allegiance to the monarchy and recognised Louis XVI., and could not dethrone him without a crime. The objection is puerile, if it originates in minds who do not believe in the possession of the people by dynasties. The Assembly at its outset had proclaimed the inalienable right of the people; and the lawfulness of necessary insurrection, and the oath of the Tennis Court (_Serment du Jeu de Paume_), were nought but an oath of disobedience to the king and of fidelity to the nation. The Assembly had afterwards proclaimed Louis XVI. king of the French. If they possessed the power of proclaiming him king, they also possessed that of proclaiming him a simple citizen. Forfeiture for the national utility, and that of the human race, was evidently one of its principles, and yet how did it act? It leaves Louis XVI. king, or makes him king, not through respect for that institution, but out of respect for his person, and pity for so great a downfall. Such was the truth; it feared sacrilege, and fell into anarchy. It was clement, noble, and generous. Louis XVI. had deserved well from his people; who well can dare to censure so magnanimous a condescension? Before the king's departure for Varennes, the absolute right of the nation was but an abstract fiction, the _summum jus_ of the Assembly. The royalty of Louis XVI. was respectable and respected, once again it was established. XV.