Tennis Court Oath: “The National Assembly, regarding itself as called upon to establish the Constitution of the kingdom, effect a regeneration of the state and maintain the true principles of the monarchy, may not be prevented from continuing its deliberations in whatever place it may be forced to take up its sittings. It further maintains that wherever its members are assembled, there is the National Assembly. The Assembly decrees that all its members shall immediately take a solemn oath never to be dissolved and to come together whenever circumstances may dictate, until the Constitution of the kingdom shall be established and placed upon a firm foundation.”[92] It is beyond the sphere of our inquiry to follow this Constituent Assembly in their arduous and complex task of formulating a constitution, and of legislating at the same time for the kingdom, while exposed to court intrigues and popular intrusion. Therefore, to conclude this chapter as we began, we have shown that the resolution of June 20 was neither a political freak, nor an act of imitation of a foreign nation. The example of the American Republic may have given stimulus and precision, yet the Tennis Court Oath must be regarded as the logical consequence of a transformation, which had been in progress for more than sixty years. THE ORIGIN OF THE REPUBLIC. Louis XVI., in 1789, was praised by the mass of the French nation as the best of monarchs, and as the restorer of national liberties; his name was coupled with that of Henry IV., a king about whom tradition had thrown a halo of glory. But, on September 21, 1792, the newly-chosen Convention abolished the monarchy. So rapid is the transition from the one phase of the national feeling to the other, that it occasions a surmise either that the professed loyalty to the monarch in 1789 was not sincere, or that the action of the Convention was the work of a coterie of radicals, who misrepresented the popular feeling. A review of the period intervening between 1789 and 1792 shows that both of these suppositions are unwarranted, and confirms the conclusion that there was a progressive development of hostility, first to Louis XVI. and the royal family, and then to the monarchical government.