The dissolution of the Whig party in England indicates what might be expected in the continental monarchies where there were no Whigs. We shall presently see that it was upon this rock, in the nature of things, that the Revolution went to pieces. The wisest of the statesmen who saw the evil days, Royer Collard, affirmed long after that all parties in the Revolution were honest, except the Royalists. He meant that the Right alone did wrong with premeditation and design. In the surprising revulsion that followed the return from Varennes, and developed the Feuillants, it was in the power of the Conservatives to give life to constitutional monarchy. That was the moment of their defection. They would have given much to save an absolute king: they deliberately abandoned the constitutional king to his fate. The 1150 men who had been the first choice of France now pass out of our sight. The 720 deputies of the Legislative Assembly were new and generally obscure names. Nobles, clergy, conservatives did not reappear, and their place was taken by the Feuillants, who, in the former Assembly, would have belonged to the Left. The centre of gravity shifted far in the revolutionary direction. The Constitution was made. The discussion of principles was over, and the dispute was not for doctrines but for power. The speakers have not the same originality or force; they are not inventors in political science; they are not the pioneers of mankind. In literary faculty, if not in political, they surpass their predecessors, and are remembered for their eloquence if not for statecraft. Reinhard, a German traveller who fell in with a group of the new deputies on their way to Paris, fell under their charm, and resolved to cast his lot with a country about to be governed by such men. Whilst he rose to be an ambassador and minister of foreign affairs, his friends were cut off in their prime, for they were the deputies who came from Bordeaux, and gave the name of their department to the party of the Gironde. By their parliamentary talents they quickly obtained the lead of the new Assembly; and as they had few ideas and no tactics, they allowed Sieyes to direct their course.