In order to control the anarchical wilfulness of demagogues and proletaires there was but one thing to be done, to strengthen the authority of the executive. This meant restoration of discipline in the army, and energetic organization of Government, extensive powers conferred on the police officials, sharp punishments, and swift justice. But how then? If power were thus conferred upon the Government to restrain proletaires and rioters, who could guarantee liberty and the National Assembly against the head of the reinforced Government, against the King, who had hitherto been by these chronic riots kept in defenceless subjection? This dilemma led to the revolutionary spirit invariably triumphing at the National Assembly. The present fear of the violence of the crowd attendant at the sittings combined with the apprehension of a future monarchical reaction. When, some years later, at the organization of the Republican Government, the weakness of authority was again felt, more than one orator freely declared the existing arrangements to be undoubtedly bad throughout, and to be amended as soon as possible; owned that this had, indeed, been perfectly known at the time of their creation in 1790, but that they were intentionally framed thus, in the interests of liberty, to prevent the King from exercising any power. Enough--the Constitutional Assembly did nothing to surround personal safety and political order with any inviolable defence; on the contrary, they did much to open the door wide to the passionate and arbitrary action of the masses. We may say that they thoughtlessly sowed the seeds of all the horrors of the Terror, and had the sad beginnings of that development before their eyes, without even an attempt to avert them. This is true, most especially in the economical department: the colossal transformation of the laws of property in France, which brought half the soil into new hands, and irresistibly threw the population at large into communistic paths, was out and out the work of the Constituent Assembly.