Accordingly, the early history of the Assembly is marked by a series of strange scenes, only possible in a nation with whom extreme versatility of temperament takes the place of humour, illustrating the susceptibility, the emotion, the feverish excitement, the liability of the whole body to act on the impulse of the moment, regardless of what the consequences might be. A happy phrase, a witty saying, a burst of declamation, would carry it off its feet, and settle the fate of a division. The prodigious quantity of written rhetoric declaimed from the tribune wasted a prodigious quantity of time, but there was always an audience ready to applaud it. The debates were conducted with very little order. The entire absence of method in the Chamber often frustrated the business-like work done by its committees. In vain Mirabeau urged his colleagues to adopt the procedure of the English House of Commons. The French people, newly emancipated, disdained the example of any other nation. In the great halls at Paris and Versailles, where the Assembly successively sat, the process of legislation continued to be attended by a constant clatter of talk and movement, interrupted by noisy shouts and gestures, by obstruction and personal abuse, and aggravated by the presence in the galleries of large numbers of strangers, whom at first the Assembly welcomed, and whose turbulence it afterwards vainly attempted to control. The noisy demonstrations in the Strangers' Gallery encouraged extreme speeches and proposals, shouted down unpopular orators, and gradually organised a species of mob-rule. The occupants of the galleries ultimately became one of the greatest dangers and defects of the Assembly. By the intimidation which they practised, not only inside its walls, but outside in the streets as well, they daunted and terrorised even brave men; and before long they forced into silence or flight many politicians, whose influence would have been valuable to the cause of moderation and good sense.