That measure, presuming that it needed a precedent before it could be legalised, had been authorised in 1789, by the Constituent Assembly, in 1793 by the Convention and, finally, in 1811 by the Empire. Nothing was settled at the first meeting. On 21 October a new assembly was convoked at the same place, and with the same object. The manufacturers were less pressing than the workmen: that is conceivable enough: they have to give and the workmen to receive; they have to lose and the workmen to gain. The manufacturers said that having been officially appointed they could not bind their confrères. A third meeting was arranged to give them time to obtain a power of attorney. Meanwhile workpeople died of hunger. This meeting was fixed for 25 October. The life or death of forty thousand operatives, that of their fathers and mothers, their wives and their children, the very existence of over one hundred thousand persons was to be discussed at that sitting. So, the unusual, lamentable and fearful spectacle was to be seen, at ten in the morning, of this unfortunate people waiting outside in the place de la Préfecture to hear their sentence. But there was not a single weapon to be seen among those thousands of supplicants! A weapon would have prevented them from joining their hands together, and they only wanted to pray. The préfet, terrified by that multitude, terrified of its very silence, came forward. Amongst all that sixty to eighty thousand persons of all ages and of both sexes, there were nearly thirty thousand men. "My good people," said the préfet to them, "I beg you to withdraw--it will be to your own interests to do so. If you stay there the tariff will seem to have been imposed by your presence. Now, in order to be valid, the deliberations must be doubly free: free in reality and free in appearance." All these famished voices with laboured breathings summoned strength to shout, "Vive le préfet!" Then they humbly retired without complaint or comment.