The most obvious and the wisest course for the National Assembly to adopt, would have been to legalise as rapidly as possible the changes so suddenly effected, and to set to work without delay to organise the new administrative system. After the 14th July, the King had completely surrendered, and the Assembly had only to act in order to be obeyed. The task before it was, it is true, difficult and almost endless. It was imperatively necessary to restore order. But it was also imperatively necessary--and this the Assembly did not see--to construct, as quickly as it could be done, some form of local government, to replace the old order which had disappeared. It was imperative to provide by some means for the necessities of the revenue, until a permanent financial system could be organised, in place of the old taxes which people would no longer pay. It was imperative to take steps to convince, not only the bourgeois and the peasants, but the distressed artisans in the towns as well, that the Assembly was alive to the urgent necessities of the moment, had a real grasp of the situation of affairs, and would do all that could be done to protect their interests, and to save them from the starvation which they imminently feared. These were the measures which Mirabeau urged upon his colleagues, but unfortunately, there were few men in the Assembly who possessed the gift of practical statesmanship, which genius, lit by experience, had conferred on Mirabeau. The character of that famous Assembly, read in its own day by the critical but far-seeing eyes of Burke, has excited the wonder of posterity. Its most notable feature was its want of practical experience. Among the upper clergy and the nobles, there were, it is true, certain deputies, who from their position had obtained some knowledge of affairs, but these men were liable to be distrusted by their colleagues, because the moderation which their experience taught them, obviously coincided with their interests. Among the Commons there were not a dozen men who had held important administrative posts. There was only one deputy, Malouet, who had held the great office of Intendant, and was in consequence really familiar with the working of the old administrative system. The great majority of the deputies of the Commons consisted of lawyers of little celebrity, who brought to the Assembly all the facility of expression, but little of the utilitarian caution, which in England is associated with their profession. The place of experience, in the case of most members of the Assembly, was taken by a large imagination, a boundless optimism, a vast store of philosophic tags and democratic phrases, a fatal fluency of speech, a fine belief in logic, an academic disregard of the rude facts of practical existence. Never was any body of men so much inspired by hope and confidence, so full of honourable enthusiasm, so convinced of its own ability, or so fixed in its honest desire, to regenerate the world.