Faithful to their plan of forming not a popular monarchy, but a species of royal republic, and stimulated by the real Republicans, whose party was daily gaining ground among their ranks, as well as by the howls and threats of those violent and outrageous demagogues, who, from the seats they had adopted in the Assembly, were now known by the name of the "Mountain,"[136] the framers of the Constitution had rendered it democratical in every point, and abridged the royal authority, till its powers became so dim and obscure as to merit Burke's happy illustration, when he exclaimed, speaking of the new-modelled French government,-- "----What _seem'd_ its head, The _likeness_ of a kingly crown had on." The crown was deprived of all appointments to civil offices, which were filled up by popular elections, the Constitutionalists being, in this respect, faithful to their own principles, which made the will of the people the source of all power. Never was such an immense patronage vested in the body of any nation at large, and the arrangement was politic in the immediate sense, as well as in conformity with the principles of those who adopted it; for it attached to the new Constitution the mass of the people, who felt themselves elevated from villanage into the exercise of sovereign power. Each member of the elective assembly of a municipality, through whose collective votes bishops, administrators, judges, and other official persons received their appointments, felt for the moment, the importance which his privilege bestowed, and recognised in his own person, with corresponding self-complacency, a fraction, however small, of the immense community, now governed by those whom they themselves elected into office. The charm of power is great at all times, but exquisite to intoxication to those to whom it is a novelty.